The canvas is certainly one of the most important pieces of the collection, a significant example of the pointillist season and of one of its most illustrious protagonists: Gaetano Previati. The theme of the relationship between mother and child was particularly dear to nineteenth-century painting and to Previati in particular, who often translated it through the bond between Mary and Jesus. an older male figure in the background could make the subject re-read as a Holy Family.