The Holy Family (c. 1620s): Art, History and Details

The Holy Family (c. 1620s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This painting of Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus is based on European sources, but it also contains several details that are specifically Indian. For example, although Mary is dressed in classical European-style robes, she is adorned with jewelry of rubies and emeralds, the preferred gems of Mughal royalty. Her fingertips are also red with henna, and she wears a bindi on her forehead. The detailed rendering of the vase evokes the Catholic St. Francis as well as Indian worship of the sun. The vessel itself points to the appreciation of Chinese blue-and-white ware imported from imperial Ming-dynasty kilns to the court of Jahangir (reigned 1605–27).

Object facts

• Title: The Holy Family
• Date: c. 1620s
• Culture: Northern India, Mughal court, early 17th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Collection: Indian Art - Mughal
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2013.312

A detail from the museum

With hennaed fingertips Mary holds the vase so baby Jesus doesn’t tip it over.

Collection credit

Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Benay, Erin E. Italy by Way of India: Translating Art and Devotion in the Early Modern World. Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.