French or North Italian, 'The Visitation', about 1630

The Virgin Mary, dressed in blue, visits her older cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with Saint John the Baptist. This episode is described in the New Testament (Luke 1: 36–55), and happens immediately after the angel visits Mary to announce her own miraculous conception of Jesus Christ.

In the Bible, the women rejoice at their pregnancies, but here they look serious and concerned. Saint Joseph, Mary’s husband, is not included in biblical descriptions of the Visitation but he often appears in paintings. Here he stands behind Mary. The elderly man descending the steps is Zacharias, Elizabeth’s husband.

The artist adopted a classical painting style: the bodies have a large and solid appearance and are based on the study of antique sculpture. The architecture is simple with little detail apart from the door and an archway revealing a glimpse of the sky and landscape beyond.

This painting was at one time attributed to Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, but the use of ultramarine blue pigment in the Virgin’s clothing makes it unlikely to have been painted in Spain. It was bought by the National Gallery as a painting by Philippe de Champaigne although this attribution is no longer accepted.

The composition is similar to Palma Vecchio’s Visitation painted in the early 1520s (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). The artist of the painting we see here may have known about Palma’s painting or about painted copies of it by David Teniers the Younger. We know that the Palma painting was in Venice until about 1637. Our painting is likely to be by a north Italian artist or a French painter working in Italy. The yellow pigment in Joseph’s cloak was first used in Naples and the architecture is Italian in style.