The Holy Family in a Landscape

Small, highly finished cabinet pictures were a specialty of Albani’s production and proved to be enormously popular with collectors, especially in France. Many were painted on copper, a technique he had learned during his years working in the studio of Denys Calvaert, a Flemish artist who had settled in Bologna and operated a successful workshop.

This devotional image of the Holy Family appears to have been particularly popular and it is known in a number of variations.