Holy Family

HOLY FAMILY. - I. LITURGY. - The liturgical cult of the Holy Family is recent.

Its first manifestations are found only in the 17th century, in Italy, France, and Belgium. From France it passed to Canada, where it underwent notable developments, thanks above all to the venerable servant of God François de Montmorency-Laval, first bishop of Québec (d. 1708) and to the blessed Marguerite Bourgeois (d. 1700). The feast, with the rite of the 2nd class, was celebrated on the second Sunday after Easter.

Meanwhile, elsewhere too, concessions multiplied, on the most disparate dates, such as, for example, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Sunday after Easter, the last Sunday of May, and the 3rd Sunday of November.

In the times of Leo XIII, when the question arose of granting the patronal solemnity to the World Association of the Holy Family, founded in 1861 at Lyon by the Jesuit Father Francoz, the Sunday within the octave of Epiphany was proposed for the titular feast, on account of the ideal closeness between the Christmas feasts and the Holy Family. But Leo XIII, on 14 June 1893, fixed the feast on the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, further establishing that it be granted without further ado "omnibus petentibus". The same Leo XIII composed the hymns for the Office.

The International Marian Congress of Zaragoza (1908) became the promoter of the extension of the feast to the whole Church; the blessed Pius X, however, had it removed from almost all particular calendars (1914), and where it was preserved, 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 in consequence of many petitions, Benedict XV permitted it on the Saturday preceding the said Sunday (1920); yet the following year (26 October 1921), while he expressed the wish for an ever wider diffusion of the Association of the Holy Family among the Christian people, as an effective example to be conformed to, he extended the feast of the Holy Family to the whole Church, fixing it on the Sunday within the Octave of Epiphany with the rite of double major. 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 Holy Family, was inserted.

Giuseppe Löw

II. ART

The simplest image of the Holy Family depicts only three persons: Mary, St. Joseph and the Child Jesus; it, however, often also includes the child St. John in the act of playing with the Child Jesus. Not infrequently St. Elizabeth also appears. Thus there can be found in the depiction of the Holy Family also four, indeed five persons, in addition to whom various saints and adoring angels sometimes appear. The concept of the representation aims to evoke a quiet image of life, of absolute peace and purity, in the house of St. Joseph at the time of the infancy of Our Lord, reflecting an intimate happiness and a sublime blessedness of the gentle aura of family life. These representations are a late iconographic type of sacred art; they appear no earlier than the Italian Renaissance.

As an early example one may cite the tondo by Pinturicchio, datable to c. 1480, in the Gallery of Siena. Various Holy Families with three persons, painted on tondi, have been left to us by Florentine painting of the early sixteenth century; among them, in first place, one should cite the tondo in the Uffizi Gallery painted by Michelangelo in 1504 for the marriage of Agnolo Doni to Maddalena Strozzi. In the Uffizi there are also preserved tondi with the Holy Family: one by Signorelli and another by Franciabigio. The Cabinet of Prints of the Uffizi possesses a drawing of the Holy Family by Fra Bartolomeo della Porta, likewise in a tondo.

Numerous too are the Holy Families of Raphael and his school. The most celebrated is the altarpiece painted by the master in 1518 for the King of France Francis I, now preserved in the Louvre. This altarpiece, with five sacred persons and two angels, became a true prototype for the numerous mannerist representations of the late sixteenth century, among which is that of Scipione Pulzone, in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. It is observed that in some Holy Families of Raphael, St. Joseph is in the background and of smaller dimensions than the Madonna, St. Elizabeth, the Child Jesus and the child St. John. Thus one sees him in the Holy Family known as della Perla, painted by Raphael in 1518 and now preserved in the Prado in Madrid, and in that by the same master in the National Museum of Naples. Raphael's followers too emphasized in their various Holy Families the presence of St. Joseph to a lesser degree, as one sees in the Madonna della Gatta of Giulio Romano, of which a replica is found in the same National Museum of Naples and another in the sacristy of S. Maria d'Aracoeli in Rome. Also the well-known panel of the National Museum of Naples, called the Madonna del Passeggio, the work of an immediate follower of Raphael, presents St. Joseph in the background of the picture, in minuscule proportions. Among the various numerous other Holy Families left to us by Italian painting of the Renaissance, one cites among the most notable that of Bernardino Luini in the Ambrosiana Picture Gallery in Milan and the overdoor fresco in the form of a lunette in the cloister of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, called the Madonna del Sacco, a masterpiece of Andrea del Sarto, to whom a beautiful Holy Family in the Borghese Gallery in Rome is also owed. Sodoma too painted some Holy Families, among which the most important is that of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, where the Child Jesus is seen adored by St. Francis, and the serene panel of the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Among the Renaissance works one also cites the Holy Family of Cesare da Sesto, owned by the Brera Picture Gallery in Milan.

The transalpine art of the early sixteenth century also devoted itself to depicting the Holy Family; this can be illustrated by a naive woodcut of Lucas Cranach the Elder, datable to 1508, where one sees the sacred group adored by hosts of dancing little angels. In the late sixteenth century in northern Europe it was sometimes customary to indicate St. Joseph only in an accessory manner; thus, for example, a Holy Family by Jan Bruegel called dei Velluti, in the Doria Gallery in Rome, where the composition is reduced to a Madonna with the Child Jesus placed against a magnificent landscape background, in the midst of which one sees a small St. Joseph.

At the dawn of the seventeenth century a special variant came into being: the Holy Family was depicted in the rest stop 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.

As better-known examples of the Rest one recalls: The Madonna of the Cherries, a masterpiece of Barocci painted in 1575, now in the Vatican Picture Gallery; the painting of Caravaggio, datable to 1592, in the Doria Gallery in Rome, and that of Carlo Saraceni, some fifteen years later, preserved in the convent of the Camaldolese at Frascati. In the Rest the Holy Family is as a rule represented in the open air, against a landscape background; beside it one almost always sees a little donkey painted. The Baroque art of the seventeenth century made a copious contribution to the genre of the Holy Family, refining in it the finest affections of family intimacy. As a first seventeenth-century example (of c. 1610) one recalls the fairy-tale Holy Family of Orazio Borgianni, now preserved in the Corsini Gallery in Rome. Various Holy Families were painted by Rubens, among which one, with three persons, is found in the Royal Gallery in Turin and another, with five persons, in the Pitti Gallery in Florence. Even more numerous are the Holy Families of van Dyck: among them the most notable are the one with five persons owned by the Royal Gallery in Turin and the one with three persons in the Old Picture Gallery of Munich. They are a vivid image of intimate family life, and this character, common to all seventeenth-century representations, is exalted in a particular way in the form of a gentle genre scene in the Holy Family of B. E. Murillo, a masterpiece of Spanish painting, which is preserved in the Prado Museum in Madrid. In general, however, the Holy Families of Italian painters of the late seventeenth century maintain a character of lesser realism. Thus the canvas of Sassoferrato in the Doria Gallery in Rome and that of Carlo Maratta, in the Capitoline Picture Gallery of Rome.

Eighteenth-century taste also refined the representations of the Holy Family; as a typical work for the first half of the century the Holy Family of Francesco Mancini, which is found in the Vatican Picture Gallery, may serve. But the eighteenth century had its greatest painter of the Holy Family in the person of Pompeo Batoni: in that of the Capitoline Picture Gallery, a creation among the most graceful of the most elegant Rococo is realized. - See plate XCV.

Witold Wehr