The Morgan presents this exhibition on the occasion of an important loan from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Rosso Fiorentino's Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist. Executed around 1520 and one of only three paintings by the artist in America, the Holy Family is the centerpiece of this rich and focused exhibition of drawings and artists' letters. Complementing Rosso's striking painting are nearly twenty Florentine High Renaissance and Mannerist drawings from the Morgan's collection, including major examples by Andrea del Sarto; Rosso's contemporaries Jacopo Pontormo, Giorgio Vasari, and Francesco Salviati, all of whom also worked in Andrea del Sarto's studio; and other preeminent draftsmen of the period such as Michelangelo, Baccio Bandinelli, Agnolo Bronzino, and Alessandro Allori. A rare drawing by Rosso, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is also on view.
This exhibition is generously sponsored by Barbara Hanson Pierce, Michael Francis Hanson, and Robert Hixon Hanson in memory of their mother, Margaret Hixon Hanson.
Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540)
Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist, ca. 1520
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Photo © The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore