The Holy Family with Saints Francis and Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist

An ecstatic Saint Francis adores the infant Christ, who appears in this warm-hearted vision with the Virgin Mary and her mother, Saint Anne, a subdued Saint Joseph, and a playful young Saint John the Baptist. Rubens made a number of modifications in the course of work on the painting, intensifying the friar’s impetuous movement and revising the Virgin’s pose from a formal profile to a casual expansiveness. American taste was slow to embrace the exuberant emotionalism of Rubens; this is the first of his works to enter an American public collection.