Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist

Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist

Jan Muller

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist is one of Jan Muller’s earliest engravings. Although the subject does not specifically appear in the Bible, it was extremely popular from the Middle Ages onward. The design is based on a lost composition by the Amsterdam painter Dirck Barendsz. The figures dominate the foreground: grouped under a tree in a triangle, with St. Joseph at the apex, Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin and mother of the Baptist at the left and Mary just right of center, the Infant Christ on her knee, and her arm extending across St. John’s shoulder, in a descending line. The print was published by Muller’s father, Harmen Jansz. Muller and his name and that of Barendsz. are included in the title space below the composition, but Jan Muller’s name is missing. He was, at this time, an unknown figure, still working in a traditional style. He later embraced the bravura engraving technique derived from Hendrick Goltzius, -- the foremost Mannerist printmaker in the Netherlands -- which later made him famous.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the BaptistHoly Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the BaptistHoly Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the BaptistHoly Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the BaptistHoly Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.