The technique of this painting seems to be one reasonable common at this time, now called ‘tüchlein’. The word just means ‘cloth’ but the technique it describes is a special form of painting on canvas. Usually oil paint sits on top of a priming layer, which has already sealed the otherwise porous canvas; with this technique water-based paint is mixed with glue and painted directly onto the cloth, without a ground layer of any kind. The resulting paintings have something of the quality of fresco – matt in finish, made up a single layer and with less contrast of light and dark.

This is an unusual image in other ways: the border of flowers and the decorated pilasters, resemble a scene in an illuminated manuscript. The idea of showing the domestic life of the Holy family is not new – Dürer’s ‘Sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt’ from the Life of Virgin of 1511, has the Virgin spinning and Joseph at his carpentry. In this painting the Virgin in weaving on a small loom resting on her lap. On the other hand it is unusual to see Joseph holding the sleeping Christ Child. The cult of Joseph the loving father is common during the Counter Reformation, but not at this date.

This painting would seem to be in a German style and to date from the early 16th century; it is difficult to place it more precisely. One proposal might be that it was Swiss and from the 1530s. This would be suggested by the relationship of the architecture, particularly its shell niche, with Holbein’s ‘Darmstadt Madonna’ which (in spite of its name) was painted for a Burgomaster of Basel in 1526.