### SACRED FAMILY — I. LITURGY
The liturgical cult of the Sacred Family is recent.
Its earliest manifestations appear only in the 17th century, in Italy, France, and Belgium. From France it spread to Canada, where it saw notable development, thanks especially to the Venerable Servant of God François Montmorency de Laval, first Bishop of Québec (d. 1708), and the Blessed Marguerite Bourgeoys (d. 1700). The feast, with the rite of second class, was celebrated on the second Sunday after Easter.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, further concessions multiplied, on the most varied dates, such as, for example, the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Sunday after Easter, the last Sunday in May, and the 3rd Sunday in November.
In the time of Leo XIII, when it was a question of granting the patronal solemnity to the World Association of the Sacred Family, founded in 1861 in Lyon by the Jesuit Fr. Francz, the titular feast was proposed for the Sunday within the Octave of Epiphany, on account of the ideal proximity between the Christmas feasts and the Sacred Family. But Leo XIII, on 14 June 1893, fixed the feast on the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, also establishing that it should be granted outright “to all places.” The same Leo XIII composed the hymns for the Office.
The International Marian Congress of Zaragoza (1908) promoted the extension of the feast to the entire Church; Bl. Pius X, however, removed it from almost all particular calendars (1914), and where it was retained, it was fixed on 19 January. At the same time, however, permission was granted to celebrate two votive Masses on the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany; but following many petitions, Benedict XV allowed it to be celebrated on the Saturday preceding that Sunday (1920). Yet the following year (26 October 1921), while expressing the hope for ever wider diffusion of the Association of the Sacred Family among the Christian people as an effective example to follow, he extended the feast of the Sacred Family to the entire Church, fixing it on the Sunday within the Octave of Epiphany with the rite of major double. As the lesson of the second Nocturn, in place of the sermon of St Augustine *In psalmos*, a text from the brief of Leo XIII of 14 June 1892, *Neminem fugit*, on the Sacred Family, was inserted.
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### Sacred Family — II. Art
The simplest image of the Sacred Family depicts only three figures: Mary, St Joseph, and the Child Jesus; yet it often also includes St John playing with the Child Jesus. Not infrequently St Elizabeth is also present. Thus, through the direction of their gazes and gestures, only three persons may be discerned among the various figures: St Bridget in the Sacred Family of Madrid at the Prado Gallery, offering a basket of roses to the Child, who in turn seems to wish to offer it to the Madonna; and St John the Baptist in the Sacred Family of Breda from 1515, who himself helps to support the standing Child Jesus, intimately participating in the divine group.
Alongside the Sacred Family depicted in a closed and austere setting, there developed at the same time a full representation of the Sacred Family in the open air, executed by Palma the Elder, whose balanced compositions convey a sense of pastoral idyll. In a broad landscape, many saints are seated or kneeling in harmonious disorder around the Virgin and the Child, often accompanied by St Joseph, as in that of the Academy of Venice. Sometimes these Sacred Families take their cue from the presentation to the Blessed Virgin by one or more donors arranged on a lower plane than the sacred figures; thus in the Sacred Family of Naples by Palma (1523–25), two donors kneel at the foot of the raised platform where Mary and the saints stand, and in their favour St Jerome and St John direct prayers to the Virgin, while the Child looks on attentively.
Sacred Family — S. F., painted by Pompeo Batoni (c. 1765). Rome, Capitoline Pinacoteca.
In the representation of the Sacred Family, four or even five persons may also appear, beyond whom various adorant saints and angels sometimes intervene. The concept of the depiction aims to evoke a quiet image of life, of absolute peace and purity, in the house of St Joseph at the time of Our Lord’s childhood, reflecting an intimate happiness and sublime beatitude of the gentle family aura. These depictions are a late iconographic type of sacred art; they do not appear before the Italian Renaissance.
As an early example, one may cite the tondo by Pinturicchio, datable to c. 1480, in the Gallery of Siena. Several Sacred Families in three figures, painted on tondi, were left to us by early 16th-century Florentine painting; among them, foremost is the tondo in the Uffizi Gallery painted by Michelangelo in 1504 for the wedding of Agnolo Doni with Maddalena Strozzi. The Uffizi also preserve tondi with the Sacred Family: one by Signorelli and another by Franciabigio. The Print Room of the Uffizi possesses a drawing of the Sacred Family by Fra Bartolomeo della Porta, also in tondo.
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### Sacred Family — S. F. called del Pajarito, painted by Murillo (17th century). Madrid, Prado Museum.
There are also numerous Holy Families by Raphael and his school. The most famous is the altarpiece painted by the master in 1518 for King Francis I of France, now preserved in the Louvre. This work, featuring five sacred figures and two angels, became a true prototype for the many Mannerist depictions of the late 16th century, including one by Scipione Pulzone in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. It is noted that in some of Raphael’s Holy Families, St Joseph appears in the background and is smaller in scale than the Madonna, St Elizabeth, the Child Jesus, and St John. This is seen in the Holy Family known as the *Perla*, painted by Raphael in 1518 and now in the Prado in Madrid, and in another by the same master in the National Museum in Naples. Raphael’s followers also accorded St Joseph a less prominent role in their various Holy Families, as seen in Giulio Romano’s *Madonna of the Cat*, of which a replica is in the National Museum in Naples and another in the sacristy of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome. Even the well-known panel in the National Museum in Naples, called the *Madonna of the Walk*, by an immediate follower of Raphael, places St Joseph in the background of the composition, in miniature proportions. Among the many other Holy Families left to us by Italian Renaissance painting, two of the most notable are Bernardino Luini’s in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan and the fresco in the form of a lunette above the door in the cloister of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, known as the *Madonna of the Sack*, a masterpiece by Andrea del Sarto, to whom is also owed a fine Holy Family in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Sodoma also painted several Holy Families, the most important of which is in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, where the Child Jesus is seen being adored by St Francis, and the serene panel in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Another Renaissance work is the Holy Family by Cesare da Sesto, in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.
The art beyond the Alps in the early 16th century also devoted itself to depicting the Holy Family; an example is an ingenuous woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder, datable to 1508, in which the sacred group is adored by throngs of dancing cherubs. In the late 16th century in northern Europe, St Joseph was sometimes indicated only in an accessory manner; for instance, a Holy Family by Jan Bruegel, called “of the Velvets,” in the Doria Gallery in Rome, where the composition is reduced to a Madonna with the Child Jesus set against a magnificent landscape background, in the midst of which a small St Joseph is visible.
At the dawn of the 17th century a special variant came into being: the Holy Family was depicted in the moment of rest during the Flight into Egypt. This variant belongs to the centuries-old iconographic genre of the Flight into Egypt, of medieval tradition, now reformed and reworked according to the new concepts of the intimacy of the Holy Family.
Among the best-known examples of the *Riposo* are: *The Madonna of the Cherries*, a masterpiece by Barocci painted in 1575, now in the Vatican Pinacoteca; the painting by Caravaggio, datable to 1592, in the Doria Gallery in Rome, and that by Carlo Saraceni, about fifteen years later, preserved in the Camaldolese convent in Frascati. In the *Riposo* the Holy Family is usually represented outdoors, against a landscape background; alongside it one almost always sees a donkey depicted. Baroque art of the 17th century made a copious contribution to the genre of the Holy Family, refining within it the most delicate affections of family intimacy. As an early 17th-century example (c. 1610) one may cite the fanciful Holy Family by Orazio Borgianni, now in the Corsini Gallery in Rome. Several Holy Families were