Holy Family with the Infant Baptist

A photograph of a painting then in the collection of Gaetano Zyr (Zir), Naples, which passed subsequently into the hands of Gen. Bosco, Naples. The painting can possibly be identified with the one described by Passavant (1860, II, p.333) as belonging to a Roman art dealer named Gaetano Menchetti. The photographed painting is a replica of the so-called ‘Madonna delle Rovine’, a picture generally attributed to the workshop of Raphael (possibly Gianfrancesco Penni) dating c.1517-18, formerly in the collection of William Banks (1786-1855) and now at Kingston Lacy, Dorset (inv. no.KLA.P.42). A photograph of the original painting can be found at RCIN 851093. The composition is known is several versions. The one at Kingston Lacy is commonly thought to be the original. Showing the full-length Virgin supporting the Christ Child sitting on an architectural fragment by means of a ribbon tied around His waist, with the Infant Baptist kneeling down on the left and St Joseph holding a candle inside a building in the left middle-ground; in a landscape.