The Holy Family on the Steps (1648): Art, History and Details

The Holy Family on the Steps (1648) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665).

The work and its context

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

This deceptively simple composition represents a complex meditation on the Holy Family’s role in the redemption of humanity. At the center, Mary presents the Christ child to the world. At the left, Saint Elizabeth leans forward to foretell his eventual death, while her son, Saint John the Baptist, offers Jesus an apple, signifying humanity’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. At the right, Saint Joseph holds a compass, a sign of his occupation as a carpenter and also symbolic of God the Father. Poussin developed his composition meticulously and deliberately, using clear primary colors, simple forms, and a geometric organization to express the central importance of the Holy Family in Christian belief.

Object facts

• Title: The Holy Family on the Steps
• Date: 1648
• Creator attribution: Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 103.5 x 135.3 x 13.3 cm (40 3/4 x 53 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.); Unframed: 73.3 x 105.8 cm (28 7/8 x 41 5/8 in.); Former: 72.3 x 104 cm (28 7/16 x 40 15/16 in.)
• Collection: P - French 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1981.18

A detail from the museum

Poussin placed small wax models in a box pierced with holes to study lighting effects.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Poussin Painting Acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art,” April 30, 1981, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1981.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 2 (February 1982): 39–82.
• Goldfarb, Hilliard T. “A Pastoral Scene with Classical Figures by Claude Lorrain.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 4 (April 1983): 164–71.

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.