Rest on the Flight into Egypt (David, Antwerp)

Last updated
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Rust tijdens de vlucht naar Egypte, Gerard David, 16de eeuw, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, 47.jpg
Artist Gerard David   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Yearc.1515
Medium oil paint, panel
Dimensions81 cm (32 in) × 58 cm (23 in)
Location Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
Accession No.47  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Identifiers RKDimages ID: 45632

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is an oil painting by the Flemish painter Gerard David. It was painted around 1515 and is now housed in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. [1] It can be compared with other works by David which depict the same theme, including paintings located in Madrid, Washington and New York and a Virgin and Child in Rotterdam.

The Flight into Egypt derives from the Gospel of Matthew (II.13-18), though it does not mention a rest, which derives from apocryphal accounts. It was a popular theme for painters in many periods. David painted it on several occasions using different compositions, [2] possibly not as the result of commissions but simply painted to put on the open market. Many of them are near-identical but for a few small details. However, in all of them David focuses attention on the seated Virgin Mary breastfeeding the Christ Child, enthroned in front of a deep forest landscape background. In the far background there is usually a scene related to either the rest or to the journey to Egypt.

The Antwerp version replaces the Prado version's background scene of the Flight into Egypt with a scene of Joseph and the donkey resting. It is held by some to be a copy by Adrian Isenbrandt. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerard David</span> Early Netherlandish painter

Gerard David was an Early Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator known for his brilliant use of color. Only a bare outline of his life survives, although some facts are known. He may have been the Meester gheraet van brugghe who became a master of the Antwerp guild in 1515. He was very successful in his lifetime and probably ran two workshops, in Antwerp and Bruges. Like many painters of his period, his reputation diminished in the 17th century until he was rediscovered in the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pieter Bruegel the Elder</span> Flemish Renaissance painter

Pieter Bruegelthe Elder was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes ; he was a pioneer in making both types of subject the focus in large paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Brueghel the Younger</span> Flemish painter (1601 – 1678)

Jan Brueghelthe Younger was a Flemish Baroque painter. He was the son of Jan Brueghel the Elder, and grandson of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, both prominent painters who contributed respectively to the development of Renaissance and Baroque painting in the Southern Netherlands. Taking over his father's workshop at an early age, he painted the same subjects as his father in a style which was similar to that of his father. He regularly collaborated with leading Flemish painters of his time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Jordaens</span> 17th-century Flemish painter

Jacob (Jacques) Jordaens was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer known for his history paintings, genre scenes and portraits. After Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, he was the leading Flemish Baroque painter of his day. Unlike those contemporaries he never travelled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their intellectual and courtly aspirations. In fact, except for a few short trips to locations elsewhere in the Low Countries, he remained in Antwerp his entire life. As well as being a successful painter, he was a prominent designer of tapestries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony van Dyck</span> 17th-century Flemish Baroque artist

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Brabantian Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Southern Netherlands and Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adriaen Isenbrandt</span> Early Netherlandish painter

Adriaen Isenbrandt or Adriaen Ysenbrandt was a painter in Bruges, in the final years of Early Netherlandish painting, and the first of the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting of the Northern Renaissance. Documentary evidence suggests he was a significant and successful artist of his period, even though no specific works by his hand are clearly documented. Art historians have conjectured that he operated a large workshop specializing in religious subjects and devotional paintings, which were executed in a conservative style in the tradition of the Early Netherlandish painting of the previous century. By his time, the new booming economy of Antwerp had made this the centre of painting in the Low Countries, but the previous centre of Bruges retained considerable prestige.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corrado Giaquinto</span> Italian painter (1703–1766)

Corrado Giaquinto was an Italian Rococo painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joachim Patinir</span> 16th-century Flemish painter

Joachim Patinir, also called Patenier, was a Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia, but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market in the Low Countries. Patinir was a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre and he was the first Flemish painter to regard himself primarily as a landscape painter. He effectively invented the world landscape, a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes which is Patinir's important contribution to Western art. His work marks an important stage in the development of the representation of perspective in landscape painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Sanders van Hemessen</span>

Jan Sanders van Hemessen was a leading Flemish Renaissance painter, belonging to the group of Italianizing Flemish painters called the Romanists, who were influenced by Italian Renaissance painting. Van Hemessen had visited Italy during the 1520s, and also Fontainebleau near Paris in the mid 1530s, where he was able to view the work of the colony of Italian artists known as the First School of Fontainebleau, who were working on the decorations for the Palace of Fontainebleau. Van Hemessen's works show his ability to interpret the Italian models into a new Flemish visual vocabulary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marinus van Reymerswaele</span> Dutch painter

Marinus van Reymerswaele or Marinus van Reymerswale was a Dutch Renaissance painter mainly known for his genre scenes and religious compositions. After studying in Leuven and training and working as an artist in Antwerp, he returned later to work in his native Northern Netherlands. He operated a large workshop which produced many versions of mainly four themes: the tax collectors, the money changer and his wife, the calling of Saint Matthew and St. Jerome in his study.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joos van Cleve</span>

Joos van Cleve was a leading painter active in Antwerp from his arrival there around 1511 until his death in 1540 or 1541. Within Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, he combines the traditional techniques of Early Netherlandish painting with influences of more contemporary Renaissance painting styles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flemish Baroque painting</span> Painting movement

Flemish Baroque painting refers to the art produced in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with the Spanish recapturing of Antwerp in 1585 and goes until about 1700, when Spanish Habsburg authority ended with the death of King Charles II. Antwerp, home to the prominent artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens, was the artistic nexus, while other notable cities include Brussels and Ghent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Paul Rubens</span> Flemish artist and diplomat (1577–1640)

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nursing Madonna</span>

The Nursing Madonna, Virgo Lactans, or Madonna Lactans, is an iconography of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the infant Jesus. In Italian it is called the Madonna del Latte. It was a common type in painting until the change in atmosphere after the Council of Trent, in which it was rather discouraged by the church, at least in public contexts, on grounds of propriety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abraham Teniers</span>

Abraham Teniers was a Flemish painter and engraver who specialized in genre paintings of villages, inns and monkey scenes. He was a member of artist family Teniers which came to prominence in the 17th century. He was also active as a publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rest on the Flight into Egypt</span> Subject in Christian art

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is a subject in Christian art showing Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus resting during their flight into Egypt. The Holy Family is normally shown in a landscape.

<i>Rest on the Flight into Egypt</i> (David, Madrid) Painting by Gerard David

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is an oil painting of around 1515 by the Flemish painter Gerard David now in the Prado Museum. It can be compared with other works on the same theme by the same painter in New York, Washington and Antwerp and a Virgin and Child in Rotterdam.

<i>Rest on the Flight into Egypt</i> (David, New York) Painting by Gerard David

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is an oil painting of around 1515 by the Flemish painter Gerard David now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

<i>Rest on the Flight into Egypt</i> (David, Washington) Painting by Gerard David

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt is an oil painting of around 1510 by the Flemish painter Gerard David now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It can be compared with other works on the same theme by the same painter in the New York, the Madrid and Antwerp and a Virgin and Child in Rotterdam.

<i>Virgin and Child</i> (Gerard David) Painting by Gerard David

The Virgin and Child is an oil painting of around 1520 by the Flemish painter Gerard David now in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. It uses a Virgin in the same pose as in works by David now in New York, Washington and Madrid. However, where those three works use the pose to portray the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, the Rotterdam work instead uses the background landscape to represent the "hortus conclusus" or 'closed garden' of the Song of Songs. It also adds white lilies to symbolise Mary's virginity.

References

  1. Mª Ángeles Piquero López. "El Descanso… del Museo del Prado" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2017-06-14.
  2. "David, Rest on the Flight into Egypt". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2017-06-14.
  3. "David, Rest on the Flight into Egypt". Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. Retrieved 2017-06-14.[ permanent dead link ]