The Holy Family with a Little Bird
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
The dog watches the bird — Murillo is quoting Federico Barocci's Madonna of the Cat, where a stalking cat threatens the bird as a sign of the Passion. Here the cat becomes a dog, and the bird, likely a gift from Joseph, becomes ordinary play.
Mary sits behind, winding wool, given a smaller part than usual. Joseph, marked by discretion, watches the Child in silence. A carpenter's bench and spinning wheel fill out the room: the everyday and the sacred sharing one floor.
No church commissioned it. In 1746 the royal inventory lists it hanging in their majesties' bedroom.
Sources: Museo Nacional del Prado, 'The Holy Family with a Little Bird', P000960. · National Gallery, London object page for Barocci's Madonna of the Cat: cat stalks bird as a Passion symbol in that composition
And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart.
Luke 2:51 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 3,051 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.