Vintage photo frame. The painting, also for the compositional scheme adopted, is among the many paintings with religious subjects, that to be characterized by prayerful expression and homespun collection, were destined for a private commission, painted in large numbers in the early seventeenth century, especially by painters Neapolitans, but not only, and displayed mostly in speakers or home interiors. Among the active Neapolitan painters in the mid-seventeenth century and who dealt with several times the theme of the Holy Family was distinguished Andrea Vaccaro, who is responsible for stylistic affinities, formal, compositional and pictorial, with his other cognate subject paintings, even the canvas topic. The subject was illustrated by Vaccaro, who after training on Caravaggio's models in Naples and natural area, had approached in the late thirties of the century, to the ways of classicism of Guido Reni, especially approaching on this basis to Massimo Stanzione, He returned from Rome in 1630, often by placing next to the figures of St. Joseph, the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, even the parents of Mary, St. Anne and St. Joachim; sometimes, as in the case of the test cloth, the only Sant'Anna; St. John often paying homage to the baby Jesus, his contemporary and mostly represented in his mother's arms; sometimes representing, together, both the Holy Family St. Anne, St. Joachim and the young Giovanni Battista. This theme, with its different appearances before indicated, was shown for the most part by the painter in canvases of medium size and with the protagonists of sacred composition 'half-length', as in the painting in question, for a long period of its activity and especially after 1640, and even in old age, always with devotion tones accentuated. There are, for concordances compositional, formal, expressive and pictorial layout made with this Holy Family with St. Anne in prayer before the Infant Jesus, known paintings by Vaccaro, with a date in the middle of the century, the Holy Family with St. John of a private collection, with obvious influences of chromatic vandychiana matrix, the canvas of the same subject in another private collection and, although in whole figures and almost natural size, the two compositions, practically identical and a more advanced stage the painter, however, after 1650, with the Holy Family, St. Anne, St. Joachim and St. John, respectively, in two different private collections. Also notable affinities with another small canvas, signed with the initials of the artist, which are painted with figures of three quarters, the Holy Family with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist praying, the appearance years ago at the gallery Jacques Leegenhoek in Paris, where there are clear references to the bright pictorial solutions in key 'neoveneta' Mattia Preti, in Naples from 1655 to 1660, and the young Luca Giordano after 1655. the painting in question, which does not have the same quality of the compositions here that were previously reported to have suffered, probably in the distant past, the consequences of a maiaccorto intervention of the chromatic surface cleaning (damage to which it was tried to put a shelter with an only partially effective restoration), presents, however, some peculiarities, particularly in the figure of St. Anne kneeling in prayer, with hands joined, and intensely devoted expressive attitude, before the Child Jesus that clings to mother's neck figure in which, especially for the face made elderly mother Mary and shriveled hands, the painter has returned for the occasion, the use of enhanced yield naturalist solutions. In addition it should also be noted that for the figure of Vaccaro Madonna seems to have always used the same female model that appears identical, for the traits of the face, also in its other known compositions of a subject identical or affine. In painting, novel, it seems being owed to the stylistic characteristics indicated, following an already dating to 1660; then in later years of the painter.