This group portrait of a middle-class Flemish family, whose identity is now unknown, is one of Key’s finest works in this genre. It has the firm handling evident in his portraits of the 1580s, revealing his outstanding technical ability to convey textures and his mastery of light. Its innovative character is evident when compared with other Flemish family portraits. Key depicts the seven sitters (a father and his six children) occupying almost all the available space. Arranged in a balanced, symmetrical way, the artist gives these figures a monumental character.The limited amount of background is dark and barely distinguishable from the black of the clothes. Key deliberately focuses our attention on the faces, which are framed by their white ruffs and emphasised by the lighting. He locates the father in the centre, seated on a Spanish leather chair in front of a table covered by a fine textile on which rest an hourglass, a skull and a book.The children, arranged in heraldic fashion (the males on the left and females on the right), are standing and organised in two tiers according to their age. Key gives them different poses in order to avoid monotony.The two youngest, depicted in foreshortening, turn towards their father, the boy holding a book and leaning on his father’s chair and the girl with one hand on the hourglass and the other on her father’s shoulder.The artist thus succeeds in balancing the prevailing verticality of the composition, while their tender gestures counterbalance the father’s grave expression.The skull on which he rests his hand and the hourglass evoke the vanitas ideas of death, the passing of time and the transient nature of worldly things.The absence of a wife and mother suggests that these figures are united by their sense of loss at her death. The first known owner of this work was Dr Wilhelm von Bode (1845–1929), who sold it to a Mr Hoffman. It passed from his grandson,W.G. Hoffman, to the collection of Sir George Leon in Bracknell. Sold at Christie’s in London (13 December 1991, lot 46), it was acquired by the Museo Nacional del Prado with funds from the Villaescusa Legacy. ( Silva Maroto, P. en: El retrato del Renacimiento, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 234)