After Nicolas Poussin (?), The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John

The Virgin’s cousin Saint Elizabeth kneels to present the infant Saint John the Baptist to the Christ Child, who is held by the standing Virgin. With its warm colours, golden light and sweet interaction between two infants, this intimate scene is very touching. As an adult, Saint John will baptise Jesus, revealing Christ as the Son of God.

Saint Joseph watches as the cousins meet. He leans on what looks like a long ruler, and on the stone block behind him is a wooden T-square, a draughtsman’s tool for drawing accurate vertical and horizontal lines. These objects allude to his skills in mathematics and architecture rather than his traditional, modest role as a carpenter.

With its columns and crumbling stonework, the setting of this scene evokes the classical past. The poses of the figures and their large, solid bodies and drapery folds recall antique statues. The Virgin rests a foot on a stone block reinforcing her sculptural appearance. The cracks in the stone columns and wall symbolise the collapse of pagan worship and the triumph of Christianity. The Virgin’s youthful features are contrasted with the frown lines on her older cousin’s forehead, while Joseph’s careworn appearance reveals the hardship of manual labour.

This painting is an copy of a seventeenth-century picture at the Musée Condé, Chantilly, usually considered to be by Nicolas Poussin. It was once attributed to Eustache Le Sueur, who worked in Paris and was inspired by Poussin and the classical world. However, Mary’s drapery is painted with a Prussian blue pigment that was first used during the eighteenth century, so the picture can't be by Poussin or Le Sueur as they lived during the seventeenth century. It is mostly likely to be an eighteenth-century or nineteenth-century copy of a picture by Poussin.