Italian school of the second half of the 18th century. "Holy Family". Polychrome wood carving, gilded and painted. Period costumes. Measurements: 56 x 37 x 26 cm. Sculptural group that represents the Holy Family that, in the most common sense of the expression, includes the closest relatives of the Child Jesus, that is to say, mother and grandmother or mother and nurturing father. In both cases, whether it is St. Anne or St. Joseph who appears, it is a group of three figures. From the artistic point of view, the arrangement of this terrestrial Trinity poses the same problems and suggests the same solutions as the heavenly Trinity. However, the difficulties are fewer. It is no longer a question of a single God in three persons whose essential unity must be expressed at the same time as diversity. The three personages are united by a blood bond, certainly, but they do not constitute an indivisible block. Moreover, all three are represented in human form, while the dove of the Holy Spirit introduces into the divine Trinity a zoomorphic element that is difficult to amalgamate with two anthropomorphic figures. On the other hand, this iconography was traditionally, until the Counter-Reformation, a representation of the Virgin and Child to which the figure of St. Joseph was added in the foreground. It was not until the reforms of Trent when St. Joseph began to take center stage as protector and guide of the Infant Jesus.