Abstract
The seventeenth-century Dutch Holy family scenes and genre painting depicting family theme show a nuclear family consisting of an average of three parents and children as main characters. The nuclear family was a unique family structure in the Netherlands and England in the seventeenth century different from other parts of Europe, and their ties served as a link between society and the state. This paper examines the social background of the Netherlands to find out why Rembrandt produced Holy Family scenes several times, and the reason why Holy Family scenes increased in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. In addition regarding the reason why Holy family scenes were depicted in the domestic household as in a genre painting and why father Joseph was depicted as a carpenter devoted to his family will be discussed in relation to the contemporary Dutch society. Holy family scenes and Dutch genre painting demonstrate the ideal of Dutch family and the role of father emphasized in the Netherlands.
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