The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist as a boy, oil on panel, 116 x 87 cm, framed

Provenance:
private collection, Perigord.

This painting is a variant of a painting by Andrea del Sarto in the collection of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. It has been suggested that it might be attributable to Giovanni Battista del Verrocchio.
This painting was executed at the end of the period of Florentine Mannerism. There are several key compositional departures from the precedent by Andrea del Sarto. The unknown painter achieved a symbiosis of various different stylistic tendencies current during the Florentine cinquecento; he managed to merge them all to create an individual and very personal work. The artist was presumably a member of the group of artists, who decorated the studiolo for Grand Duke Francesco I in Florence under the guidance of Giorgio Vasari. This group of painters included Alessandro Allori, Niccolo Betti, Santi di Tito and Jacopo Zucchi. Such decorative work was amongst some of the most important commissions at the time for Florentine artists. This painting is not influenced in stylistic terms by Mannerism alone, but still bears traces of the Classical forms of the High Renaissance.