The only completed easel painting by Michelangelo that survives.
He made it as a wedding gift for the Florentine merchant Agnolo Doni and his wife Maddalena Strozzi — a tondo, a circular format favoured for domestic commissions.
Michelangelo considered himself primarily a sculptor and took on painting reluctantly.
The Sistine Chapel was four years away and he was still arguing with the Pope about it.
This shows what a sculptor does when he paints.
The Holy Family twists in an interlocking spiral of impossible grace and physical power.
Mary's arm, passing the infant over her shoulder, is the arm of an athlete.
The muscles of the Christ child are those of a small Hercules.
The whole composition has mass.
You feel it would be heavy to lift.
In the background, a group of nude young men lean on a low wall.
Art historians have never fully agreed on who they represent — pagans waiting for baptism, the world before Christ, a purely aesthetic choice.
Michelangelo probably enjoyed the ambiguity.
Fun fact: the original carved frame is also in the Uffizi, attributed to Michelangelo himself.
If the attribution is correct, it may be the only surviving example of an artist-designed Renaissance frame.
