Holy Family under an Arch

This is a superb impression of Lodovico Carracci’s first and most elaborate print. His paintings, relative to those of his cousins Agostino and Annibale, essay less rational and classically conditioned approaches to visually convincing and sentimentally affecting representation. This engraving strains the conventions of its technique with lyrical forms and an eccentric syntax –- the arbitrary shape and luminous facets of the Virgin’s drapery –- that achieve a similarly personal expressiveness.