Holy Kinship

Derick Baegert painted this Holy Kinship around 1500 in Wesel on the Lower Rhine. Baegert was one of the leading painters of the Lower Rhenish school, and his Holy Kinship compositions showing the extended family of the Virgin were among his most ambitious works. The subject was enormously popular in the Rhineland and Low Countries around 1500. The oil medium allowed for rich tonal transitions and glazed layers of color that created luminous depth impossible with the older tempera technique. Such devotional panels served both liturgical contexts in churches and chapels and private devotional use in the homes of wealthy families who maintained personal altars and oratories.

Oil on panel with vivid coloring and detailed rendering of the large family group. Baegert's robust figure style and the complex arrangement of the multi-generational holy family demonstrate his command of ambitious compositions.