The Holy Family by Juan Simón Gutiérrez

The Holy Family by Juan Simón Gutiérrez

Three figures and the dove

Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child are brought close together at a table covered with a dark green cloth. The Child stands on the table between them, naked except for a white cloth that falls from his shoulder, with fair curling hair. He looks down and out of the picture, towards the viewer.

Mary sits at the left in a red dress, with a golden shawl over her shoulders and a pale cloth over her dark hair. The Child rests one arm on her shoulder; she lays her hand flat on the tablecloth and looks away to the right, past him. Joseph leans in from the right, a bearded man in a brown cloak, his eyes lowered. He holds a stem of white lilies close to his face, and the Child has put his hand on it too. The flowers open just above the Child's head.

Above them, in a glow of warm light, the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers with its wings spread, and winged cherub heads look down from the clouds on either side, three at the left and three at the right.

Signs

Lilies, or a staff that has burst into flower, are among the attributes commonly given to Saint Joseph. The flowering staff recalls the account in the non-canonical Gospel of James, in which Mary's husband was chosen when Joseph's walking stick alone came into flower. Here the stem is shared between Joseph and the Child, and the dove of the Holy Spirit is set directly above the Child's head, so that the picture reads from heaven down to the family at the table.

The painter

Juan Simón Gutiérrez was born in Medina Sidonia in 1634 and went young to Seville, where, according to the Real Academia de la Historia, he probably trained with Murillo himself. He is documented as a member of the Seville academy of painting between 1664 and 1672, and in 1680 he held the guild office of alcalde alamín, examining candidates for the rank of master. He married Antonia Navarro de Córdoba in 1677 and lived in the parish of San Pedro. He died in Seville on 16 October 1718.

Few of his pictures are signed. Two dated works anchor his career: the Virgin and Child with Saint Augustine, of 1686, in the convent of the Trinity at Carmona, and the Death of Saint Dominic, of 1711, now in the Museo de Bellas Artes of Seville.

The attribution

This painting is in a private collection and carries no date. The Web Gallery of Art catalogues it as by Gutiérrez, oil on canvas, 126 by 96 centimetres, and places it in the second half of the seventeenth century. Its attribution rests on comparison with the signed Carmona altarpiece, which the Web Gallery of Art finds close in technique and in the types of the figures.

About this print

Made from the published photograph of the painting, in its upright format, from the dove and cherubs at the top to Mary's and Joseph's hands on the tablecloth at the bottom.

Sources: Web Gallery of Art, "Gutiérrez, Juan Simón: The Holy Family" · Wikimedia Commons · Real Academia de la Historia, Historia Hispánica, "Juan Simón Gutiérrez" · Wikipedia, "Juan Simón Gutiérrez" · Wikipedia, "Saint Joseph"