Holy Family (Doni Tondo)
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 to 1564) · about 1505 to 1507
A round panel shows Mary twisting back over her shoulder to receive the Christ Child from Joseph, who crouches behind her, while the young John the Baptist watches from a ledge and five naked youths lounge against a wall in the distance. The colours are startling: a sharp pink and blue for Mary, orange and grey for Joseph, all lit as if by a cold morning sun. Michelangelo painted the picture for the Florentine merchant Agnolo Doni, probably to mark the birth of his daughter in 1507. It is the only finished panel painting by Michelangelo that survives, and it still sits in its original carved and gilded frame, which he may have designed himself.
The painter was a sculptor first, and it shows. The Holy Family is a single spiralling block of muscle and cloth, every limb turning in a different direction, and Mary's bare arm is as powerful as a man's. The nudes behind derive from ancient statues that had just been dug up in Rome, including the Laocoon found in 1506. Look at the way the colours shift within a single fold of drapery, from yellow to green, a trick called cangiante that Michelangelo would use again on the Sistine ceiling. The low wall between the family and the nudes may separate the Christian world from the pagan one.
Vasari tells a story that Doni tried to pay less than the agreed price and Michelangelo simply doubled his fee until the merchant gave in. The tondo passed with the Doni inheritance into the Medici collections and was in the Uffizi by the late sixteenth century. It is a preview of the Sistine Chapel in miniature. A memorable detail is the frame, with five carved heads that peer out at you like the figures inside the picture.
Did You Know? When the patron tried to bargain the price down, Michelangelo reportedly doubled it, and Doni ended up paying twice the original sum.
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