The Holy Family with St John the Baptist
by BEZZI, Giovanni Francesco, Oil on wood, 50 x 38 cm
This picture displays several distinctive aspects of Mannerist vocabulary: formal complexity, awkward composition, eclectic style, and vibrant colouring. Unlike his master’s fluid, near academic reading of Michelangelo’s style, Giovan Francesco Bezzi (Nosadella) invested his figures with an exaggerated, almost grotesque monumentality and placed them within a relationship of congested intimacy.