Holy Family with the Infant St. John

Francesco Trevisani · c. 1700

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

96.9 × 72.4 cm (38 1/4 × 28 1/2 in.); Framed: 117.5 × 94 × 10.2 cm (46 1/4 × 37 × 4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Trevisani's Holy Family with the Infant St. John is a tenderly intimate devotional painting, its figures gathered in warm shadow with a softness that feels almost domestic rather than monumental. Francesco Trevisani (1656–1746) spent most of his career in Rome, where he became one of the city's most sought-after painters of sacred subjects. Trained in Venice before moving to the papal capital, he absorbed the drama of the Roman Baroque and softened it — his figures glow with a quiet warmth that owes as much to Correggio as to Caravaggio. In works like this one, Trevisani favoured close, affectionate compositions where the sacred is rendered intimate, using delicate sfumato and rich but muted colour to draw the eye gently across the canvas. Trevisani served as a painter to James Francis Edward Stuart, the Jacobite claimant living in Roman exile, producing several altarpieces and devotional works for him — a reminder that his patrons extended well beyond the Church. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas by trained studio artists working directly from high-resolution source material, preserving Trevisani's characteristic softness of light, the warmth of his flesh tones, and the quiet emotional depth that has kept this painting compelling for more than three centuries.