Author
Ercole Procaccini the Elder
Biography
(Bologna 1515 - 1595)
Date
Half 16th century
Technique
Oil on canvas
Size
56 x 52 cm
Description:
Ercole Procaccini the Elder was a painter often placed side by side with Michelangelo: the almost sculptural forms of the bodies portrayed with Mannerist taste combined with the use of paint in a coloristic sense, as in use in the central Italian area of the sixteenth century, restore the image of an artist up to date and in line with the innovations of the artistic centers of the time.
Private and secular patrons particularly loved this iconography that exalted intimate and domestic virtues, so much so that in the Counter-Reformation era it became a symbolic manifesto of the Christian and patriarchal core.
In this work we see Joseph who, instead of embodying the virtues associated with the carpenter's trade, becomes the Pater Familia who, with the gesture of his hand, points the way - Christian’s way - to follow.