Rest on the Flight into Egypt (David, New York)

Last updated
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Gerard David - The rest on the flight into Egypt (Metropolitan Museum of Art).jpg
Artist Gerard David   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Yearc. 1515
Medium Oil paint, panel
Dimensions50.8 cm (20.0 in) × 43.2 cm (17.0 in)
Location Metropolitan Museum of Art
Accession No.49.7.21  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Identifiers RKDimages ID: 43968
The Met object ID: 436101

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. [1]

Description

It can be compared with other works on the same theme by the same painter in Madrid, Washington, and Antwerp and a Virgin and Child in Rotterdam. The composition is near-identical to the Madrid and Washington examples, though the New York one shows an apple branch instead of a basket.

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.

Related Research Articles

Gerard David 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.

Antonio da Correggio Italian Renaissance painter (1489–1534)

Antonio Allegri da Correggio, usually known as just Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the High Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the sixteenth century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Baroque art of the seventeenth century and the Rococo art of the eighteenth century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro.

Annibale Carracci Bolognese painter (1560–1609)

Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo Spanish Baroque painter (1617-1682)

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively, realist portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits, one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s, and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017-2018, the two museums held an exhibition of them.

Lorenzo Lotto Italian painter

Lorenzo Lotto was an Italian painter, draughtsman, and illustrator, traditionally placed in the Venetian school, though much of his career was spent in other north Italian cities. He painted mainly altarpieces, religious subjects and portraits. He was active during the High Renaissance and the first half of the Mannerist period, but his work maintained a generally similar High Renaissance style throughout his career, although his nervous and eccentric posings and distortions represented a transitional stage to the Florentine and Roman Mannerists.

Carlo Saraceni Italian painter

Carlo Saraceni was an Italian early-Baroque painter, whose reputation as a "first-class painter of the second rank" was improved with the publication of a modern monograph in 1968.

Adriaen Isenbrandt 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.

Martin Schongauer 15th-century German artist

Martin Schongauer, also known as Martin Schön or Hübsch Martin by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter. He was the most important printmaker north of the Alps before Albrecht Dürer, a younger artist who collected his work. Schongauer is the first German painter to be a significant engraver, although he seems to have had the family background and training in goldsmithing which was usual for early engravers.

<i>Virgin of the Rocks</i> Two paintings by Leonardo da Vinci

The Virgin of the Rocks, sometimes the Madonna of the Rocks, is the name of two paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, of the same subject, with a composition which is identical except for several significant details. The version generally considered the prime version, the earlier of the two, is unrestored and hangs in the Louvre in Paris. The other, which was restored between 2008 and 2010, hangs in the National Gallery, London. The works are often known as the Louvre Virgin of the Rocks and London Virgin of the Rocks respectively. The paintings are both nearly 2 metres high and are painted in oils. Both were originally painted on wooden panels, but the Louvre version has been transferred to canvas.

Corrado Giaquinto Italian painter (1703–1766)

Corrado Giaquinto was an Italian Rococo painter.

Andrea Solari (1460–1524) was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Milanese school. He was initially named Andre del Gobbo, but more confusingly as Andrea del Bartolo a name shared with two other Italian painters, the 14th-century Siennese Andrea di Bartolo, and the 15th-century Florentine Andrea di Bartolo.

Joachim Patinir 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.

Petrus Christus Flemish painter (c.1410–1475)

Petrus Christus was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges from 1444, where, along with Hans Memling, he became the leading painter after the death of Jan van Eyck. He was influenced by van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden and is noted for his innovations with linear perspective and a meticulous technique which seems derived from miniatures and manuscript illumination. Today, some 30 works are confidently attributed to him. The best known include the Portrait of a Carthusian (1446) and Portrait of a Young Girl ; both are highly innovative in the presentation of the figure against detailed, rather than flat, backgrounds.

Ridolfo Ghirlandaio Italian painter

Ridolfo di Domenico Bigordi, better known as Ridolfo Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter active mainly in Florence. He was the son of Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Nursing Madonna

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.

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

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. 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.

<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.