La Sagrada Familia y San Juan Bautista

The center of the composition is occupied by the Virgin who is bigger in size than the rest of the figures. The virgin holds Jesus in her arms and wraps him in white cloth, while Infant Jesus caresses a sheep with his left hand and gives his blessing. To the left, we find the figure of Saint Joseph who holds a stick with his right hand and seems to look the complete scene, from the back angle. The figure of Saint Joseph has a smaller scale than the Virgin. In the bottom right angle, Saint John gazes at infant Jesus and points at him with his finger. In the foreground, over the table covered with a green cloth, there is a cross made of thin reed and a hamper with handles that contains a bunch of grapes and white cloth. The superior background is made of a composition of clouds in different shades that dilute towards the center, coinciding with the Virgin’s halo. The predominant colors are different tones of red and green, opaque colors that are typical of the author.

Since the Renaissance, the devotion towards the Holy Family became common, even though in medieval times, it was depicted in the context of the Nativity of Jesus. Their popularity was based on the thought that in the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth, heaven and earth joined, turning into an example to follow. Later on, in the Counter-Reformist art, it acquired the rank of an earthly trinity, blessed by the celestial trinity. In some cases, the group was expanded to include John the Baptist and Saint Elizabeth. This addition wasn’t justified by the Gospels that say that John met Christ when he baptizes him in the Jordan river. However, the Meditation of the Pseudo Bonaventure says that back in Bethlehem, after the scape to Egypt, the Holy Family stopped in Elizabeth’s home.

This theme was widely developed by the Italian Renaissance artists. In da Vinci’s Virgin on the Rocks, Infant Jesus, as if he was conscious of his function, blesses his cousin, as an image of humanity itself. On his part, Raphael made countless and imaginative variations about the theme of the Virgin and Infant Jesus. The characteristics of Raphael can be applied to the Sevillian artist, Andrés de Concha, since in Spain the formal solutions of the Italian classism were assimilated during the third and fourth decade of the 16th century. In this sense, connected with his classical art that expressed powerful emotions and a consistently poetic harmony, the studies of the viceregal painting have related this work of the Holy Family and Saint John with the painting of Saint Cecilia. Don Diego Angulo, who was already inclined to attribute them to Andrés de Concha, treats them as a whole. In fact, the painting of Andrea del Sarto is inspired by the vigorous drawings of Raphael, but with a higher contrast between lights and shadows. In his work with the same theme, the Holy Family Borgherini, the light focuses the figure of the Virgin and Infant Jesus, while the figure of Joseph is in the background almost in the dark.

The same characters and with a similar disposition are present in the work of the painter Beccafumi. Saint John leans to from behind the Virgin and, on the right side, Saint John hugs Jesus, who, like in Concha’s work, caresses a sheep. However, he makes us focus our attention on the figure of the Virgin, who expresses mildness in comparison with the previous examples. Saint Joseph has a secondary role and, even though he turns his head at the Virgin, we don’t know what he’s really looking at. On his part, even though Saint John gazes at Infant Jesus, he seems to come out of the composition and leans on the frame of the painting.

Andrés de Concha was one of the outstanding artists of the Spanish 16th century and he carried out a very complete work in the New Spain. Although he didn’t sign any of his paintings, there are agreements and documents that relate him to the architecture and the execution of altarpieces, triumphal arches and, paintings.

For Guillermo Tovar, this piece has been key to attribute the paintings of altarpieces of Coixtlahuaca, to the same artist, even though decades earlier, Toussaint had already related the paintings of this altarpiece with Yanhuitlán, a work from Concha as well. There is a direct relationship between the colors and the treatment of the figures “long hands, thin fingers and the union of the index and ring finger”. In the same way, we can appreciate characters that are very similar to Saint Joseph in the paintings of the altarpieces of Yanhuitlán and Coixtlahuaca. That way of painting, placing the head and suggesting movement, seems to be one of the most typical elements in the work of Concha because it’s a character that is never absent, also Infant Jesus is very similar to the paintings of the altarpieces.

As for its origin, there seems to have been an error of interpretation that has been repeated in following texts. The Sagrada Familia that Couto places in La Profesa do not match the description of our painting. This is a painting by Baltasar de Echave Ibía. There is information about the Sagrada Familia of Concha together with the Martirio de San Lorenzo, by the same author, that belonged to the collection of Antonio Gutiérrez Víctor, and a collector from Tampico. The Sagrada Familia and San Juan was restored in 1871 by Huitrado, under the direction of the painter José Salomé Pina, the work consisted in detaching the canvas from its board, which is moth-eaten and sticking it on a new one, which has allowed its conservation.