The Holy Family with Mary Magdalen

A laughing, playful Christ Child reaches for fruit from a glass bowl, while his mother, strangely melancholy, already seems to know what is coming. Beside them Mary Magdalene, in scarlet, leans in with grace.

The story behind the painting

This oil on canvas by El Greco dates from the years 1590 to 1595 and is kept in the Cleveland Museum of Art in the United States. In Harold Wethey's catalogue, where it is number 86, it is the prototype of type III of El Greco's Holy Family. The scene of the Holy Family with Mary Magdalene does not appear in the canonical gospels. It is an emotional image meant to touch popular feeling, in keeping with the mentality of the Counter-Reformation. The French article gives the size as 130 by 100 cm, Wikidata as 132 by 100 cm.

What to look for

The colours are brilliant and harmonious: the sky blue of the Virgin's cloak against the red of the Magdalene's, and the luminous yellow of Saint Joseph's tunic. On the left, Joseph holds out a glass bowl of fruit toward the Child. Mary, very stylised, holds the Child standing and with her right hand offers him a fruit taken from the bowl. The Child is not the naturalistic infant of the earlier types but playful and laughing. The Magdalene, graceful and kind, wears a scarlet cloak that does not fully hide her chestnut hair. As in the earlier types, there is no setting, only a cloudy sky.

Meaning and intent

The fruit speaks. The apple stands for the fall of Adam, the cherries for the blood of Christ, the peaches for salvation and the pears for the sweetness of Christ's virtues. That is why Mary's face carries a melancholy not seen in the earlier versions: the fruit foreshadows the Passion. Against her serenity, the Magdalene shows a complex psychology. The composition comes from type II with major changes: Saint Anne disappears from the left, the Magdalene takes her place on the right, and Joseph moves from right to left.

Legacy

The painting came from the convent of Esquivias in Torrejón de Velasco and passed through Juan Gutiérrez, Vargas and Machuca in Madrid, Stanislas O'Rossen in Paris in 1908, Von Nemes in Budapest in 1913 and Gentile di Giuseppe in Paris, before the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired it in 1926. It was shown at the El Greco exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris that ended on 10 February 2020. Wethey records six workshop copies made in Toledo, some of lesser quality; the one in the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City is considered particularly important.