The Holy Family

The Virgin and Child tenderly embrace as Joseph looks on from behind. The Virgin holds her son tightly, one hand on his chest and the other around his torso, her fingers pressing into his flesh. Christ clasps an unblemished apple in his left hand, a symbol of his role as “the new Adam.” Joseph holds a wooden bowl with a lid that keeps the porridge-like milk warm for the child. Two decaying apples – an exquisitely observed still life element and a stark allusion to the future passion of Christ—sit atop the lid. In a strategic appeal to patrons in the dynamic Antwerp art market, David addressed the taste for quotidian subjects by placing the holy family in a contemporary Netherlandish interior with a view over a verdant hilly landscape dominated by a castle.