For a guy who hated painting, Michelangelo did a pretty good job on this one.

According to Michelangelo, painting was one of the inferior art forms. Clearly, sculpture was way more refined and worthy of his artistic efforts. Just look at his David  – sweet, marble, male perfection. But with a clear rivalry against Leonardo da Vinci that even sparked a contest to paint a mural for Florence’s town hall, I guess an artist’s gotta do what an artist’s gotta do.

There was much at stake for artists who received public commissions for both the Church and the government, but private commissions also garnered fame and fortune. Michelangelo had a pretty illustrious fan base, including nine different Catholic Popes, as well as the most rich and powerful families in Renaissance Italy. And when a member of a family like the Strozzis wants you to paint something, best believe you’re gonna paint something. The Strozzis were the sworn enemies of Florence’s other big banking family, the Medicis, who had artists like Donatello in their fat, back pockets. So having art specially made by the best artists of the time provided many bragging rights.

The tondo, which is just a fancy name for a round painting, was the typical format for a privately commissioned artwork, and Michelangelo probably painted this one to celebrate the marriage of Agnolo Doni to Maddalena Strozzi. The couple also had Raphael paint their portraits a few years after Michelangelo completed this painting. But this tondo is particularly significant to the holy grail of Renaissance art history because it is the only surviving, finished panel painting by Michelangelo. Michelangelo had a bad habit of rarely completing what he started...I guess we have that in common. What’s even cooler is that this painting is still in its original, 500-year-old frame. The frame is delightfully creepy because it includes carved heads of Jesus Christ and the four prophets who who predicted the coming of the Messiah. Oh, did I mention that Michelangelo also designed the frame? Show-off.

The theory that Michelangelo painted this tondo as a wedding gift makes sense because Renaissance people associated tondos with domestic ideals. Basically, they would hire artists to paint pictures of how they envisioned their best selves – maybe a little bit like a contemporary vision board, except made by a world-class artist and not a pre-teen girl using cut-out magazine images. So I guess if you’re one of the most powerful families in Renaissance Florence, you can envision yourself as grandly as you want. But striving to be as great as THE Holy Family? As if. It’s especially hilarious because, as Mary looks lovingly at baby Jesus, Joseph looks mad as hell. Maybe he’s thinking about how he’s not really his wife’s baby daddy, but that’s neither here nor there.

Another more humble (and depressing) theory is that the couple wanted the Holy Family’s protection in their marriage after the death of their first child. Sadly, Agnolo and Maddalena had four children whom they each named Giovanni Battista and who all died shortly after birth. The inclusion of baby Saint John the Baptist, called Giovanni in Italy, might reference these trying times.