Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth

In a quiet room of the carpenter’s house at Nazareth, the boy Christ gathers a crown of thorns upon a table while the Virgin sits sewing beside him, an anxious Joseph standing watch at the left. Francisco de Zurbarán turned the everyday business of the holy household into a meditation on the sacrifice to come, the still, unspoken gravity of the domestic scene underscored by his characteristic clarity of light and object. Painted around 1640, it is one of the most intimate and human portrayals of the Holy Family in all of Spanish Baroque painting.