Die Heilige Familie mit dem Heilige Franziskus

Battista Dossi's Holy Family with Saint Francis, painted around 1513 and now at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, is a devotional work from the Ferrara court context in which Battista worked alongside his more celebrated brother Dosso Dossi. Saint Francis's presence with the Holy Family creates a devotional narrative of mystical encounter between the Franciscan saint — who received the stigmata and was said to have had a vision of the Christ child — and the sacred figures themselves. Ferrarese painting of this period combines intense local color with a somewhat eccentric figural style that distinguishes it sharply from the more classicizing painting of Florence and Rome.

The warm Ferrarese palette and the characteristic emotional intensity of the school are moderated by the intimate scale of the Holy Family grouping. Saint Francis is rendered with the rough-habited simplicity of the Franciscan tradition alongside the more idealized forms of the Madonna and Child.