The Holy Family in the House of the Robber, Francesco Fanelli

Exhibition Label: "Giorgio Vasari and Court Culture in Late Renaissance Italy," Sep-2012, Sally Cornelison and Susan Earle The Holy Family in the House of the Robber is a rarely depicted subject from the apocryphal (non-biblical) Arabian Gospel of the Childhood of Christ. When Herod, threatened at the news that a new king of the Jews had been born, ordered the death of all male children, the Virgin Mary and Joseph fled with the Christ child into Egypt. On the way they were threatened by robbers, who were so overcome by the majestic appearance of Christ that they took the Holy Family in and prepared a bath for the child. A further legend according to which one of the benevolent robbers was Dismas (or Dimas), the penitent thief who was crucified alongside Christ, may explain the pairing of this uncommon scene with its pendant that depicts Christ Bearing the Cross. Archive Label 2001: For years the name of the artist who modelled these two octagonal reliefs was unknown. On the basis of their style, the reliefs were known to be Italian, and thought to have been made in the sixteenth century by a Florentine or Venetian sculptor. Recently art historians have recognized the similarities between these reliefs and bronzes by Francesco Fanelli, a seventeenth-century Florentine artist who worked for a time in England and called himself 'Sculptor to the King of Great Britain.' Several other versions of these reliefs exist, one pair in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts The Holy Family in the House of the Robber is a rarely depicted subject from the Apocryphal Arabian Gospel of the Childhood of Christ. When Herod, threatened at the news that a new king of the Jews had been born, ordered the death of all male children, the Virgin Mary and Joseph fled with the Christ child into Egypt. On the way they were threatened by robbers, who were so overcome by the majestic appearance of Christ that they took the Holy Family in and prepared a bath for the child.