Emilian School, 18th Century, Rest From The Flight Into Egypt

Emilian School, 18th century

Rest from the Flight into Egypt

Oil on canvas 18.5 x 24.5

The work depicts, in a bucolic and nocturnal context, the Madonna sitting on the ground with one knee bent and the other leg lying down, intent on breastfeeding the baby Jesus. On the edge is Saint Joseph, almost in a secondary position and in shadow with respect to the Madonna and Child. Finally, the donkey also appears, on which the Virgin and her son undertake the escape journey to Egypt to escape Herod's persecution, interrupting the journey to indulge in a moment of refreshment. This subject was particularly successful in the artistic scene, although the Flight is told only in the Gospel according to Matthew and in a verse of the Quran where its unfolding in Egyptian lands is contextualized. It is the apocryphal texts that give us the most details about the story, from which the artists take inspiration: from the well-known date palms that would have bowed on their own to stretch their fruit to the Child Jesus, to the countless fords of the Nile River (Historia monachorum in Aegypto); again, from lions and leopards ready to escort the trio (Pseudo Gospel of Matthew) at the pace of a pressing Jesus so that the parents would not suffer excessively from the heat up to multiple miracles (Arab-Syriac Gospel of Childhood). The painting in question, however, presents the Holy Family in a rather essential natural context, of which a few small trees can be seen from the dim light.

The treatment of the robes, modelled by soft, well-shaded and well-chiaroscuro colours, as well as that of the flesh tones, particularly that of the Madonna, as well as porcelain, brings the painting back to an Emilian matrix. The work still suffers from seventeenth-century tradition as regards its nocturnal setting, but should be placed in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Of private collection is a Rest from the Flight into Egypt by an Anonymous Bolognese artist from the 18th century, partly similar to the one presented here: note in fact the pose of the Virgin, taken in profile, sitting on the ground in the same position as the Madonna under examination. The model for the Virgin finds a suoo preceding Kuunei masters of 17th-century Emilian painting, such as Francesco Albani.