The Holy Family
Artist: Lorenzo di Ottavio Costa (Italian, ca.1460-1535)
Date: about 1510
Dimensions:
Frame: 44 1/4 × 37 1/2 × 3 in. (112.4 × 95.3 × 7.6 cm)
35 × 25 1/2 in. (88.9 × 64.8 cm)
Medium: Oil (and perhaps tempera) on wood panel
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1965.174
Label Text:Painted for one of the most intelligent and powerful women of the Renaissance, this image of a sweet-faced Madonna with Joseph and the infant Jesus creates a serene mood with its charming landscape peopled by music-playing shepherds (paint loss has turned one shepherd, who plays a bagpipe, into a ghost-like outline). Isabella d’Este, wife of the Marquis of Mantua, commissioned the painting from Costa, who was the court painter at Mantua from 1506 till his death in 1535. Highly educated and sophisticated, Isabella was well known for her patronage of music, literature, and art.
Not on view
In Collection(s)