Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo: The Holy Family

The painting is signed 'Van Loo' at the lower edge. The composition is based on a seventeenth-century etching by Bartolomeo Schedoni, but Van Loo has made it all his own, rethinking it entirely in the painterly language of the French eighteenth-century - the Christ Child's hair even looks curled by rollers.
The painting is in wonderful condition, and it is still unlined, so the real quality of the brushwork remains evident. The colour is fresh.
Van Loo was the last generation of one the most successful families of painters in French (obviously of Dutch extraction). He won the Prix de Rome in 1738; and he was later appointed court painter to Frederick the Great in Berlin.