Bartolomeo Schedoni, 'The Holy Family', about 1613-15

The Virgin Mary holds her infant son tenderly on her knee as he learns to read, supporting him as he follows the words with his tiny finger in a gesture familiar to all parents. The Child traces the line of text with one hand, while the other rests tenderly on his mother’s thumb. Saint Joseph gently supports the open book.

This intimate and charming depiction of the holy family is one of the finest and most beautiful of numerous small pictures of this subject which Schedoni painted in the last years of his life. The close-knit composition, bathed in a soft golden light, creates a powerful sense of domesticity and warmth, while the nearness of the figures to the picture plane connects us closely with them.

According to an inscription on the back of the panel, this picture belonged to Schedoni’s wife Barbara, whom he married in 1611. It was probably painted in the last two years of the artist’s life, and was presumably done for pleasure, since it remained in the possession of Schedoni’s widow after his death in 1615. She gave it to her mother, Violante Cacciardina, who sold it in 1618.

From 1607 Schedoni was working in Parma for Duke Ranuccio I Farnese, whose favourite painter he was: receipts and lists of his works in the Farnese collection show that all the important works of his maturity were painted for the Duke, and nearly all have survived and are mainly in the Galleria Nazionale, Parma, or in the Museo e Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. According to the terms of his contract Schedoni could work for other patrons only with the Duke’s permission, but it seems clear that Ranuccio had no objection to him producing modest devotional paintings like this one. Schedoni painted many such small-scale pictures of the holy family for a more popular market, and numerous workshop copies and versions also survive. An autograph variant of this particular composition is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: probably dating from slightly earlier, it includes the young Saint John the Baptist who is being helped to read by the Christ Child.

The sweetness of the image is at odds with what we know of the artist: the son of a mask-maker, Schedoni was a violent and disorderly man who served several prison sentences and, according to a seventeenth-century chronicler, died in a fit of passion – possibly suicide – after a night of heavy gambling losses.

Before entering the Gallery’s collection in 2013 the painting belonged to Sir Denis Mahon, one of the great collectors of Italian Baroque art in the modern era.