Holy Family
Author: Unknown
Date: 16th century
Material: Plaster and pigments
Dimensions (cm): H 150,5 x W 130,7
Provenance: Ponte da Barca, Igreja de São Salvador de Bravães
Inventory No.: MAS PD 3
This depiction of the Holy Family presents, at the centre, Our Lady breastfeeding the Child and, on the right side, Saint Joseph has an object in his left hand.
This painting and the one representing the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (MAS PD 4) were detached from the walls that flank the triumphal arch of the Igreja de São Salvador de Bravães in the 1930s.
According to Paula Bessa, they may have been made by the same workshop and they were executed over the previous paintings – that remain in situ – depicting the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Our Lady with the Child. That is to say, the execution of these new paintings corresponds, most likely, to a change in taste and to the manifestation of new forms of devotion.
These paintings, in which one can see the taste for movement and for the rotundity of shapes, are, very likely, manifestations of an already mannerist and post-Tridentine aesthetics. This fresco reveals the adoption of Italian models (in this case that of Rafael), with the use of grotesques and a fineness in the classical drawing that could revert to a Braga workshop.