The Holy Family with Saint Mary Magdalen

The work is executed in glue-tempera and gold on canvas, measuring 57.2 × 45.7 cm. This use of canvas, along with its stylistic affinities to works such as the Trivulzio Madonna and Madonna della Vittoria, particularly the fruit-hedge background, dates the painting to Mantegna's late period. The composition features the Virgin, Christ Child, Saint Joseph, and Mary Magdalene; the melancholic, absorbed expressions of the female figures anticipate Christ's Passion. The paint surface is now opaque and allows the canvas texture to show through, a condition attributed to poor preservation rather than artistic intent.

The painting, also known as the Altman Madonna, dates to Mantegna’s late period, c. 1495–1505, based on its canvas support and stylistic affinities with the Trivulzio Madonna and the Madonna della Vittoria. It may have been the work recorded by Marco Boschini in the Ospedale degli Incurabili in Venice. By 1902 the painting belonged to Neapolitan count Agosto d’Aiuti, who sold it that year to an English antiquarian in London.

After passing through several owners, it was acquired in 1912 by American collector Benjamin Altman, who bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1913.

The painting is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it forms part of the Altman Collection. It was acquired in 1912 by American collector Benjamin Altman, who bequeathed it to the museum in 1913. The work does not have a publicly listed inventory or accession number in the provided sources, and no exhibition history is documented.

Scholars date the painting to Mantegna’s late period (c. 1495–1505) based on its use of canvas and stylistic affinities with the Trivulzio Madonna and the Madonna della Vittoria, notably the fruit-hedge background. The work’s opaque paint surface, which reveals the canvas beneath, has been attributed to its conservation state rather than the artist’s original intent. The painting entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art via Benjamin Altman’s bequest in 1913, following a provenance through European collections including the Neapolitan count Agosto d’Aiuti.

Its place in art history is thus as a representative late devotional work by Mantegna, showing continued engagement with iconographic and compositional motifs from his earlier altarpieces.

Andrea Mantegna painted The Holy Family with Saint Mary Magdalen between 1495 and 1505. This tempera on canvas work depicts the Virgin Mary, Christ Child, Saint Joseph, and Mary Magdalen in a close arrangement. Measuring 57.2 by 45.7 cm, the painting is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It is also known as the Altman Madonna, named after a significant former owner.