Holy Family in an Interior

This dark and subtle etching is one of the artist's most expressive. Only the muted light that glows through the large window on the right gently illuminates the mother and child and picks out the edges of objects within the background shadows. Just distinguishable behind the nursing Virgin is Joseph at the ready with a cloth in his hands. Bol created such delicate tonal effects within a considerably obscured composition by slightly varying the dense etched hatchings and enhancing it with drypoint and burin. The seventeenth-century Dutch household setting reveals little of the religious nature of this scene; the Virgin, however, wears archaic dress characteristic of biblical figures in works of this period.
Bol, who discreetly signed and dated the print in one of the oval windowpanes, went to Amsterdam to study with Rembrandt van Rijn about 1636. Although he produced this print shortly after he left Rembrandt's studio and established himself as an independent artist, the striking chiaroscuro still bears strong stylistic connections to his master's work. The subject also depends on Rembrandt thematically, notably on his etched and painted domestic scenes featuring the Holy Family.