Collection of art - Flight in to Egypt

1509

Artist:

Lucas Cranach the Elder

German, 1472-1553

Simone Cantarini

Italian, 1612-1648

ABOUT THIS ARTWORK

In this etching, Mary and Joseph feast on the fruits of their guardian angels’ labors—harvested from a tall date palm and drawn from a hidden spring—during a respite on their way to Egypt. Simone Cantarini’s broad etching style gives the scene an openness and feeling of immediacy and calm lacking in other treatments of the subject. No vignettes hint at the ghastly Massacre of the Innocents, which the Holy Family has journeyed to avoid. The influence of Cantarini’s one-time teacher Guido Reni is also suggested by the placid intimacy of the mother and child.

Flight into Egypt

Artist:

Sébastien Bourdon

French, 1616-1671

Joseph in Egypt

1668–71

Artist:

Sébastien Bourdon

French, 1616-1671

The Flight into Egypt, from the Life of the VirginDate:

c. 1504–05, published 1511

Artist:

Albrecht Dürer

German, 1471-1528

ABOUT THIS ARTWORK

Early in his career Albrecht Dürer set out to meet Martin Schongauer but arrived after the famous printmaker’s death. This woodcut from The Life of the Virgin, one of Dürer’s three major illustrated books along with The Passion and The Apocalypse, represents an homage to Schongauer. Compared to Schongauer’s print of the scene, Dürer’s image shares an interest in a variety of exotic vegetation (palms) and desert creatures (lizards) and by suggesting the arid nature of the landscape, visually reinforces how far the family had to travel to escape the persecution of Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents.