Holy Family with Saint John

This painting has been attributed to Stefano Pieri and can be dated back to around 1590.
In the centre of the canvas, the Madonna, seated almost with her back turned, accentuates a twisting movement of her bust, turning her face towards the spectator, as if seeking complicity in our gaze. She holds Baby Jesus who, while standing on her lap, crowns her with a garland. This central composition is derived from a Madonna and Child by Alessandro Allori in the Galleria Palatina in Florence.
On the right sits Saint John, holding a cross made of reeds. To the left of the painting, seated just behind the Madonna, we find Saint Joseph, nodding off and, almost bored, benevolently watching the scene. This pose creates an intimate atmosphere of human everyday life, also underlined by the detail, bottom left, of a basket with sewing work abandoned on the floor.
The work was previously attributed to Giovan Maria Butteri, a pupil of Bronzino and close to Allori, but more recently it has been likened for stylistic reasons to Stefano Pieri, also a pupil of Bronzino and like Butteri who was employed in the decoration of the first corridor of the Uffizi together with Allori around 1581. The painting is characterised by uniform colour tones, featuring brown and pink tones, and a particular realism in the rendering of faces and details, hallmarks of Pieri's work. This artist, whose catalogue of works was still being compiled, often worked in the plains between Florence and Pistoia, so much so that the most stringent stylistic comparisons have been proposed with his Madonna in Glory in the Pistoiese church of Santa Maria Assunta in Badia a Pacciana, where similarities can be found in facial types, poses, gestures and use of colour, and in two other paintings of his now preserved in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.