Flemish school, follower of PETER PAUL RUBENS (Siegen, Germany, 1577 - Antwerp, Belgium, 1640); 17th century.

Flemish school, follower of PETER PAUL RUBENS (Siegen, Germany, 1577 - Antwerp, Belgium, 1640); 17th century.
"The Return of the Holy Family".
Oil on panel. Cradled.
Measurements: 52 x 40 cm; 63 x 50 cm (frame).
This work is based on a composition by Rubens of which there are two versions; one in Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Athenaeum; and Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Earl of Leicester. The Rubens painting was engraved by Lucas Vostermann, and this painting is a copy of that engraving.
We are faced with the episode of the "Return of the Holy Family from Egypt", a model similar to that of the flight to Egypt, but, in this case, we see a more serene image. It is worth noting a fundamental difference between the flight and the return from Egypt: when the holy family flees to Egypt to escape Herod, the child Jesus is still a newborn, in this image, on the contrary, we see Jesus already as an infant, who returns walking hand in hand and under the complicit gaze of his parents.
Peter Paul Rubens was a painter of the Flemish school who, however, competed on equal terms with contemporary Italian artists, and enjoyed a very important international importance, since his influence was also key in other schools, as is the case of the transition to full baroque in Spain. Although born in Westphalia, Rubens grew up in Antwerp, where his family originated.Rubens had three teachers, the first being Tobias Verhaecht, a painter of precise and meticulous technique who had traveled to Italy, and who instilled in the young painter the first artistic rudiments. It is also possible that Rubens traveled to Italy influenced by this first master. The second was Adam van Noort, a Romanist painter also oriented towards the Italian influence, with a language still Mannerist, and who must also have influenced the young man to visit Italy. Finally, his third teacher was Otto van Veen, the most outstanding and the last of them. After his training, Rubens joined the Antwerp painters' guild in 1598. Only two years later he made a trip to Italy, where he remained between 1600 and 1608, and in 1609 he returned to the Netherlands, in the service of the governors of Flanders, Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. In addition to being a chamber painter, Rubens will exercise diplomatic tasks for the court that will take him to visit Spain, London and Paris. In 1609 he married Isabel Brant in Antwerp and organized his workshop, hiring excellent collaborators, with whom he worked side by side, many of them being specialist painters (Frans Snyders, Jan Brueghel de Velours...). He will also take on disciples and create an excellent workshop of engravers, who will work from drawings in his own hand, and under his supervision.