Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist
Rosso Fiorentino Italian
Not on view
This vibrant Holy Family demonstrates the role that the unresolved and sketchy played in Rosso’s work. The connections between the figures have been carefully considered and the surface is alive with the play of light and shadow, but the brush contour lines appear over barely defined forms. We do not know whether this effect was intentional or whether the work was left incomplete, but the relief-like composition and use of such a rough surface is reminiscent of some of Donatello’s sculpture, suggesting that the innovative Rosso may have been seeking to achieve something similar in paint.
