Luini personifies the reception of Leonardo in Lombardy through the reuse of his formal inventions, often combining figures from several of Da Vinci’s prototypes as though putting together pieces in a jigsaw. While the gesture of the Virgin in this Holy Family is inspired by the Virgin of the Rocks at the Musée du Louvre, the postures of the children, a motif never represented by the master
Bernardino Luini depicted this passage from the New Testament (Mark 6:27–28) several times. The version in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence is the closest to the one in the Museo del Prado. They differ solely in the fact that the Uffizi version includes a female servant alongside Salome. Although the Bible states that the Baptist’s head was shown to Salome on a dish or tray, 15th-century Flem
The figure type and the finished style of drawing suggest the work of the Lombard painters Bernardino Luini (c. 1480/85-1532) or Andrea Solario (c. 1465-1524). A number of weaknesses in the handling, however, suggest that this may be a copy.
This impressive study is a rare example of Aurelio Luini´s finished drawings in pen. The artist is better known for his more rapid pen studies, a feature of which is a rather ragged, disorderly contour. Although there are indeed certain reminiscences of Federico Zuccaro´s compositional formulae -which reveals that the Prado study must have been drawn relatively late in Luini´s ca