Italian school; end of the XVI century.

Italian school; late sixteenth century.
"Rest of the flight to Egypt".
Oil on panel.
Measurements: 35 x 49 cm; 61 x 75,5 cm (frame).
The flight to Egypt is an episode of the Gospel of Matthew very treated in art, often used to identify the Holy Family with those disadvantaged by emigration and political repression. The New Testament story, very brief and typical of the Gospel of Matthew, tells how an angel appears in a dream to St. Joseph and tells him that he must flee to Egypt with Mary and the Child, because King Herod was looking for him to kill him. Joseph obeys, and after a while he is ordered to return, in a similar manner. The evangelist himself sees in the episode the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy: "out of Egypt I called my son" (Hosea 11:1). In the apocryphal Gospels and in the later Christian tradition, this episode will be expanded with a multitude of anecdotes and miracles that occurred during the journey, among which we find the rest during the flight to Egypt, a necessary pause for the Virgin to suckle the Child.
In this particular case the author has represented the scene narrated by the apocryphal gospels, since the Virgin Mary can be seen holding the Child to her breast. Both characters are on the left side of the composition and behind them is Joseph, who leans resting, while observing the tender scene between mother and son. Both the representation of the ideal of family presented in this work, as well as the use of warm, bright tones, added to the rounded forms, place this work in the period of the seventeenth century.