The well-calibrated composition is brought to life by the scenic invention of the angel at the top right, captured in the act of drawing a heavy drape back from the proscenium, thereby enabling the viewer to contemplate the mystery unfolding before his or her eyes. 

This painting was purchased in the 1990s from the Galleria Scardeoni in Lugano. It is painted in oils on a copper support set into a panel and is in a satisfactory state of preservation, allowing us to appreciate the chromatic range of dazzling hues and the extreme accuracy of its execution. The meeting between the infant St John and the young Jesus is set against the background of a wooded landscape, edged on the right by the ruins of an ancient building, of which we can glimpse the base of a column. Mary has interrupted her reading of the prayer book to keep a close eye on her son, while Joseph watches over the scene thoughtfully. The well-calibrated composition is brought to life by the scenic invention of the angel at the top right, captured in the act of drawing a heavy drape back from the proscenium, thereby enabling the viewer to contemplate the mystery unfolding before his or her eyes. 

Stephen Pepper drew attention to the Holy Family with the Infant St John in 1985, when it was still in the Silvano Lodi Collection. We do not know the previous history of the work, which came from an unspecified Genoese collection.¹ At the time of publication, Pepper attributed it unhesitatingly to Il Domenichino, supported by the favourable opinion of Denis Mahon.² In 1987, during an exhibition at Harari and Johns in London, the scholar reiterated the attribution to the painter from Bologna, remarking upon the consensus of Federico Zeri, but also the negative assessment of Richard Spear, author of Il Domenichino’s catalogue raisonné.

Ten years later, when the work was on loan to the Il Domenichino exhibition in the Musei Capitolini in Rome, Pepper enjoyed almost unanimous acceptance of his proposed attribution and was able to argue in support of his reasons once again, based on the recognition of the artist’s early style in the unusual combination of stylistic influences drawn from Annibale Carracci and Francesco Albani that permeates this elegant painting on copper. After arriving in Rome in 1602, Il Domenichino joined the group of young Bolognese painters working alongside Annibale Carracci, forming a firm friendship with Albani and soon establishing himself as one of the main assistants to the master, who even entrusted him with the execution of some frescoes in Palazzo Farnese. Over the course of the first decade of the 17^th century, Il Domenichino’s style was heavily influenced by Annibale, as is also clear to see in the painting on copper from the Cerruti Collection in the choice of setting and the arrangement of the figures - including the angel with the drape, close in spirit to the Palazzo Farnese frescoes - and the dynamic colouring and rendering of affections. Pepper produced a convincing comparison between the painting and a canvas by Il Domenichino dating to around 1605 and showing the Madonna and Child with St John (Paris, Musée du Louvre), a copy of a composition by Annibale conserved at Hampton Court, entitled The Madonna and Sleeping Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (“Il Silenzio”).³

The Parisian canvas shows the Virgin and two children with features almost identical to those in the copper painting. The softened volumetric rendering of the figures is also very similar, lacking in the rather heavy solidity of Il Domenichino’s earliest works and equally far removed from the monumental, almost sculptural stature of the paintings produced from the end of the first decade onwards, such as the frescoes in the abbey of Grottaferrata or the copper with The Way to Calvary at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (c. 1610). Another characteristic - not yet highlighted - that can be observed in the Cerruti copper also supports its authorship by Il Domenichino, and that is to say the rather controlled rendering of affections compared to the domestic intimacy and affectionate tenderness of the paintings and drawings on the subject of the Holy Family by Annibale Carracci, used as models by Il Domenichino in the creation of his painting. 

We can also thank Pepper for pointing out a preparatory drawing for the Cerruti Collection Holy Family at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, in which the artist studies different positions for the Virgin’s face and for the meeting between the two children, experimenting with placing the young Jesus on his mother’s lap (fig. 1).⁴

Paolo Vanoli

¹ Pepper 1996, p. 77.

² Pepper 1985, pp. 518-519, fig. 4.

³ S. Pepper, in Rome 1996-97.

⁴ Pepper 1987; S. Pepper, in Rome 1996-97.