The Holy Family on the Steps, 1648
Oil on canvas
Nicolas Poussin
(French, 1594-1665)
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund 1981.18
Seated at the base of a staircase, the Virgin holds the infant Christ, who reaches for an apple offered by the infant John the Baptist. John's mother, Elizabeth, is seated at the far left, while the Virgin's husband, Joseph, draws with a compass, an allusion to the carpenter's trade and a traditional symbol of God as the architect of the universe. Artists are also associated with the compass, which suggests that their creative powers are divinely inspired.
Placing the Virgin and Christ Child at the apex of a triangle, above the earthly level of the basket of fruit and the viewer, signals their role as the gateway to the ideal, heavenly city above.
Although born in France, Poussin spent much of his career in Rome. His lucid compositions, geometric forms, and intellectual themes set the standard for the neoclassical revival of the 1600s and laid the foundations of French academic theory.