Use this Art Guide video in Step 3: Contemplation of Columban 
A resource to help you pray using the images and Art Guide of the 2023 Columban Art Calendar.
Our Saviour Subject to His Parents at Nazareth, 1847–1856 (oil on canvas) Herbert, John Rogers (1810–1890) Guildhall Art Gallery Bridgeman Images
This nineteenth-century oil painting by John Rogers Herbert represents the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in his youth. The rural setting, with its stone well, mudbrick house and shade veranda made of wood and straw, evokes the humble home at Nazareth where Jesus grew to maturity under the guidance of his parents. The surrounding landscape suggests a dry, arid and uninhabited region of the Holy Land. Yet the painting is clearly focused on meaningful activity, where the family members are engaged in work that relies on produce from the land — wood, wool and water.
Joseph is depicted sawing timber — perhaps to make a plough or maintain the home — while Jesus carries a flat woven basket to fill with wood off-cuts that have been bundled together on the ground. Mary pensively observes her son work as she sits beside her spinning wheel.
The art academy of the time was critical of John Herbert’s interpretation of this theme in that he did not attempt to represent the appearance or demeanour of the young Jesus in his divine nature. Clearly, though, the painter’s intention was to stress the humble ordinariness of Jesus’s life as a youth, and the fact that he lived obediently under the authority of his parents according to the Jewish custom of the day before embarking on his public ministry as the Son of God.
