Portraits of the Holy family were often private commissions that served as domestic devotional pieces. Hung in the home or ancestral chapel, they were intended to shape and strengthen family identity by offering examples of loving bonds between husband and wife as well as parent and child. Michelangelo’s Holy Family was no exception. Painted for Agnolo Doni at the time of his marriage to Maddalena Strozzi, it offered the newlyweds an inspiring image of the perfect domestic un