The Holy Family in a Room

Description

Bol's depiction of the Holy Family by a window in an interior reveals his love of domestic detail. Through manipulating his network of lines, Bol suggested dark shadows engulfing most of the forms in the room, yet also left areas of transparency that disclose furnishings typical of the middle-class Dutch seventeenth-century dwelling. Illuminated by the light streaming in from the window, the Holy Family is shown in a tender moment: Mary suckles the Child, Joseph attentively holds a cloth, and a housecat looks on from the hearth. In similar scenes of dark interiors with saints, Rembrandt emphasized the spiritual; here Bol stressed the mundane.