Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist

The Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist is one of Jan Muller’s earliest engravings. Although the subject does not specifically appear in the Bible, it was extremely popular from the Middle Ages onward. The design is based on a lost composition by the Amsterdam painter Dirck Barendsz. The figures dominate the foreground: grouped under a tree in a triangle, with St. Joseph at the apex, Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin and mother of the Baptist at the left and Mary just right of center, the Infant Christ on her knee, and her arm extending across St. John’s shoulder, in a descending line.


The print was published by Muller’s father, Harmen Jansz. Muller and his name and that of Barendsz. are included in the title space below the composition, but Jan Muller’s name is missing. He was, at this time, an unknown figure, still working in a traditional style. He later embraced the bravura engraving technique derived from Hendrick Goltzius, -- the foremost Mannerist printmaker in the Netherlands -- which later made him famous.