Chiseled Bronze Plaque, 16th Century - The Flight Into Egypt, Veneto Area

Veneto, 16th century
Flight into Egypt
Bronze plaque, 10 x 8 cm
Antique frame, 33 x 22 cm

Refined chiseled bronze plaque depicting the evangelical episode of the Flight into Egypt, made in the Veneto area during the 16th century. The precious bronze plaque is contained in an antique 17th century frame in gilded wood and carved with spirals and acanthus leaves.
The event depicted is narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (2,13-23), and here the Holy Family is represented in the left corner, within a lush landscape that occupies a large part of the representation, as they leave the city of Bethlehem. The Virgin and Child are fleeing on the back of the donkey led by Joseph in the direction of Egypt. After the visit of the Magi, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him of the danger from Herod the Great, telling him to take Mother and Child and go to Egypt (2:13-14), so that Jesus could escape the massacre of the innocents. The narrative tone is intimate and contemplative, accentuated by the rendering of minute details and the fluid composition of the landscape, where nature and architecture blend harmoniously.
These bronze plaques chiseled in low relief were works of great prestige in the Renaissance, often used as private devotional objects, inserted in sacred furniture or as study models for goldsmiths and sculptors. The work generally starts from a lost-wax mold or a matrix, and is then finished with a chisel with great mastery, as in this case, where the details of the landscape and the folds of the clothes are executed with extraordinary precision.
Numerous contemporary examples are preserved in museum collections, often attributed to Paduan or Venetian workshops, active between the late fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This particular iconography of the Flight into Egypt, set in a wooded or hilly landscape, is also recurrent in Florentine and Lombard plaquettes, but here it takes on a typically Venetian quality, evident in the softness of the forms and the perspective construction of the background.
The work is mounted in an antique contemporary frame in gilded and carved wood, decorated with spiral and acanthus leaf motifs, typical of the Paduan and Venetian Baroque of the first half of the seventeenth century. This combination, of cultured and devotional taste, suggests a private devotional use, intended for a refined clientele.
This plaque represents a precious example of Renaissance micro-sculpture. It is an object of great collector's charm, capable of speaking to both the connoisseur and the enthusiast, ideal for a collection of sacred decorative arts or Italian bronzes of the sixteenth century.

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