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| Laurent de La Hyre, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt French, 1648 Louisville, Speed Art Museum |
As we have seen in the previous essay, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Part I, by the period around 1500 the subject of the Rest on the
Flight into Egypt was well enough established to begin to move beyond strict
adherence to its specifically Biblical and apocryphal sources.
Just Resting
In many works of art, the Holy Family is seen to be simply resting. They may be seated on the ground, or under a tree, or finding shelter in ruined buildings (the latter carries with it a reference to the end of the old order, which is to be transformed by the Infant Jesus).
As happened in paintings of the Flight into Egypt itself, artists frequently set the Rest on the Flight amid landscape, which sometimes dwarfed the figures of the Holy Family at rest as it had in motion.
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| Parmigianino, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, c.1523-1525 London, Courtauld Gallery |
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| Cornelys Massys, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Flemish, c.1540-1545 Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado |
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| Pieter Lastman, The Rest on Flight into Egypt Dutch, c.1600 Berlin, Gemaeldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin |
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| Abraham Bloemaert, Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt Dutch, c.1605-1610 Utrecht, Centraal Museum |
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| Jan Brueghel the Elder, Forest Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt Flemish, 1607 Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum |
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| Peter van der Borcht, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Flemish, c.1618 Brighton, Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries |
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| Cornelis van Poelenburch, The Rest on Flight into Egypt Dutch, c. 1640-1650 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts |
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| Cornelis van Poelenburgh, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Dutch, c.1640 Cambridge (MA), Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University |
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| Laurent de la Hyre, The Rest on Flight into Egypt French, 1641 Nantes, Musee des Beaux-Arts |
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| Laurent de La Hire, The Holy Family in a Landscape with Antique Ruins French, After 1641 Berlin, Gemaeldegalerie der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Claude Lorrain, Landscape with the Rest on Flight into Egypt French, 1647 Dresden, Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister |
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| Rembrandt, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Dutch, 1647 Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland |
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| Bernard Fuckerad, The Rest on Flight into Egypt German, before 1662 Cologne, Church of the Assumption |
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| Bartolome Esteban Murillo, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Spanish, c.1665 St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum |
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| Giambattista Pittoni, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, c. 1725-1726 Pedralbes, Fundacion Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza |
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| Paul Delaroche, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt French, 1844 London, Wallace Collection |
Resting Activities
As part of this more independent strain of interpretation other
symbols, activities and attributes began to be added to engage the Holy
Family. Among them are:
Feeding the Baby – The earliest of these images show a quiet
scene in which Mary feeds Jesus, while Joseph rests or tends to the donkey.
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| Gerard David, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Flemish, c. 1500 Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten |
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| Gerard David, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Flemish, c.1500 Oslo, Nasjonalmuseet |
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| Orazio Gentileschi, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, c. 1622-1628 Vienna, Kunstshistorisches Museum |
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| Noel Halle, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt French, c. 1755-1760 Private Collection |
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| Jacob More, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Scottish, c.1780 Private Collection |
Reading - This activity,
a sign of a certain amount of available leisure and therefore conveying the idea of rest, is primarily engaged in by
Saint Joseph, occasionally by Mary and also occasionally by Jesus. It is
also a reference to the Old Testament writings which predicted or prefigured
the coming of the Messiah.
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| Andrea del Sarto, The Madonna del Sacco Italian, 1525 Florence, Church of Santissima Annunziata |
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| Francesco Albani, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, c.1610 Private Collection |
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| Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, 17th Century Nantes, Musee des Beaux-Arts |
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| Pierre Puget, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt French, c. 1662-1663 Private Collection |
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| Aert de Gelder, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Dutch, c. 1690 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts |
Listening to Music – What is perhaps the most famous image of
the Rest on the Flight into Egypt is that painted by Caravaggio around
1596.
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| Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, c. 1596-1597 Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilii |
In this picture we see Mary
cuddling the sleeping Child to the right while Joseph, seated at the left,
holds music for the angel who stands at the center of the painting, his back to
us, as he plays a viol or violin.
Other
pictures show angelic orchestras serenading the Child and His Mother.
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| Arcangelo Salimbeni, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, c. 1571-1572 St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum |
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| Carlo Saraceni, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, 1606 Frascati, Eremo dei Camaldolesi |
Playing – Occasionally, some artists depicted the Christ Child as playing with angels or with butterflies or birds. Butterflies are usually considered to refer to the Resurrection, since they emerge for the cocoons of their larval stage through a process that resembles death and resurrection. Birds often refer to the souls of the Blessed, freed from their earthbound existence.1
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| Albrecht Altdorfer, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt German, 1510 Berlin, Gemaeldegalerie der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Parmigianino, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, 1524 Madrid, Museo del Prado |
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| Maerten van Heemskerck, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Dutch, c.1530 Washington (DC), National Gallery of Art |
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| Anthony van Dyck, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, known as the Madonna with the Partridges Flemish, c. 1630-1632 St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum |
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| Antoine Watteau, The Holy Family (Rest on the Flight into Egypt) French, 1719 St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum |
Lambs – The infant Saint John the Baptist is often shown in proximity to a lamb, which is one of his attributes, based on his adult declaration that the adult Jesus is the “lamb of God”. However, in a few cases lambs also appear in images of the Rest when John is not there.
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| Anonymous, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Flemish, c.1620 Enniskillen (NI), Castle Coole, National Trust |
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| Angelo Caroselli, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Italian, c. 1630-1645 Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica |
Whenever they do appear, however, they are references to the same idea,
that Jesus is the sacrificial, pure Lamb of God.
Arriving in Egypt
A few images show the Holy Family arriving in Egypt and
surrounded with elements of Egyptian civilization, as it was known at the time
in which that particular work was painted.
Thus the earliest images in this group are quite fanciful and imagine
Egypt as being similar to contemporary Europe. One can see, through these paintings, the growing level of awareness of Egyptian civilization and art. Thus the images made in the
later years of the nineteenth century are archaeological in character,
reflecting the greatly increased knowledge of Egyptian civilization.
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| The Holy Family Arrives in Egypt with the Fall of the Egyptian Idols From the Salzburger Missal German (Regensburg), 15th Century Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek MS BSB Clm 15708, fol. 90v |
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| Nicolas Poussin, The Holy Family in Egypt French, c. 1655-1657 St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum |
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| Jan Frans van Bloemen, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Flemish, c.1690 Private Collection |
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Jan van Huysum, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Dutch, c. 1700-1749 Peterborough (UK), Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery
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| Edwin Long, Anno Domini, The Arrival of the Holy Family in Egypt English, 1883 Bournemouth (UK), Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum |
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| James Tissot, The Sojourn in Egypt French, 1886-1894 New York, Brooklyn Museum |
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| Glyn Warren Philpot, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt English, 1922 London, Tate Britain |
The very latest of this kind of image that I could find, from the 1920s, reflects early twentieth-century artistic movements and is a return to a kind of symbolic world view. As the Holy Family lie asleep on the ground beside a fallen statue, they are observed, not by angels, but by mythical creatures from Roman and Egyptian religions. There are centaurs, a faun and a dark and ominous sphinx.
To Be Continued....
© M. Duffy, 2017
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- See: George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, New York, Oxford University Press, 1961, which is still the standard work on this subject.
