Giulio Romano's Holy Family: The Renaissance Devotional Image as Poetic Prayer
GETTY CENTER
Museum Lecture Hall
As a religious image, Giulio Romano's Holy Family was intended to concentrate the viewer's attention in the process of prayer, but the elegant and poetically expressive treatment of the subject also aimed to elicit admiration for its specific artistic quality. Robert Williams, professor of art history at UC Santa Barbara, explains how these two sources of value—often considered incompatible, if not mutually contradictory—were reconciled in the Renaissance viewer's mind.