, c.1597,
Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome The panel in the Grabow Altarpiece emphasises eating and drinking: Jesus is breastfeeding, the donkey drinking from a stream, and Joseph eating (probably bread) while offering Mary a bottle. Although the painting has a
gold ground, this is one of the panels where landscape settings are painted around the edges. For about a century after this, depictions remain few. An altarpiece by
Hans Memling (Louvre) marks the beginning of a sharp increase in depictions of the scene, and introduces the miracles to the background landscape, though the composition, with a standing Virgin, is unusual. In the decades around 1500 the Virgin and Child often dominate the composition in
Early Netherlandish paintings, with Joseph and the donkey in the middle distance, if they are visible at all. In a
Gerard David in the
National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Joseph is seen in the background gathering food by beating a
chestnut tree with a long stick, a detail probably borrowed from miniatures of the
Labours of the Months in the calendars of
books of hours, and perhaps a northern substitute for the dates in the legends. The Washington painting appears to be the earliest in a number of paintings of the subject, or using the central figures in other contexts, that were apparently produced by transfer from copies of drawings. Many of these are loosely attributed to the large
Bruges workshop of
Adriaen Isenbrandt. Despite the fact that on the
Flight itself Joseph is invariably shown on foot, leading the donkey on which Mary and the child are seated, in
Rests, Joseph is typically still shown standing, if not engaged in some activity. After the High Renaissance he often stands behind the Virgin, giving a pyramidal group of figures when she is flanked by angels. Relatively few depictions show him resting his feet seated next to Mary, or eating. These include an engraving of c. 1506 by
Lucas van Leyden, and a
chiaroscuro drawing by
Hans Springinklee of 1514. The wider landscape of the Patinir in the
Prado allows space for depictions in the distance (at right) of the
Massacre of the Innocents which provoked the flight, and the "miracle of the corn". The falling pagan idols are shown both on the top of the temple at far left (though a statue of a rat-headed god is intact) and by the pair of metal feet on the sphere next to the Virgin. The donkey is grazing some way off, and Joseph seems to have obtained a pot of milk, which he is carrying back. There are a number of versions by Patinir or his circle; other prolific makers of
Rests include
Jan Brueghel the Elder and
Jan Brueghel the Younger and various collaborators, and
Simone Cantarini (1612–1648). Part way through painting what would have been an early Italian version of the subject,
Giovanni Cariani seems to have changed his mind and added shepherds to create an "eccentric" composition of the
Adoration of the Shepherds (1515–17,
Royal Collection). 's only
nightscape, 1647,
National Gallery of Ireland Untypical examples with specific activities include
the famous Caravaggio, where Joseph holds the
sheet music for an angel playing a
viol; here both the Virgin and Child have fallen asleep. The only piece of detail the gospel gives is that the flight began "at night", but landscape scenes at night were very rare in art in the first centuries of the subject. In a night scene by
Rembrandt (1647,
Dublin), the family seem to have joined some herdsmen with a big fire for the night; this is his only night landscape. This relates to
the painting of the Flight by
Adam Elsheimer where they are just arriving at such an improvised encampment; Rembrandt would have known this from a print. Two other unusual treatments from
Dutch Golden Age painting are a realist scene showing the family in more or less contemporary dress in a run-down Dutch tavern or farmhouse by
Abraham Bloemaert (1634,
Rijksmuseum), and one with Joseph reading from a large book, no doubt religious, by
Aert de Gelder (c. 1690, Boston). The subject is sometimes not easily distinguished from the
Holy Family in Egypt, though the presence of the young
John the Baptist, and a house nearby, suggest this, as the presence of the traditional ass or
donkey suggests a
Rest. In any case the "rest" was sometimes later interpreted to include the entire stay in Egypt, which according to the
Golden Legend lasted seven years. A
woodcut in
Albrecht Dürer's series on the
Life of the Virgin is always known as a
Rest on the Flight, despite showing Joseph clearly well settled in Egypt, with a large house, and busy working on his carpentry, assisted by angels. , 1805,
Kunsthalle Hamburg In the same way, depictions of the
Flight which include the miracle of the date palm approach being a
Rest, as in the influential
engraving by
Martin Schongauer (before 1491), where Mary remains sitting on the stationary donkey as Joseph gathers dates. From about 1550 Italian paintings often have infestations of
putti-angels, following German examples in prints, and paintings from the first decade of the century by
Lucas Cranach the Elder and
Albrecht Altdorfer. General trends in
landscape painting affect treatments of the subject. Like the
Flight, it was popular with
Joachim Patinir and his circle, who set the family amid extensive
world landscapes.
Maryan Ainsworth contrasts this group, centred on the outward-looking international trading-centre of
Antwerp, with the paintings dominated by large figures of the Virgin and Child produced by Gerard David and his circle, based in Bruges, a city that had lost commercial pre-eminence and was now turning in on itself. 18th-century depictions were often set beside classical ruins, and a few 19th-century ones featured
Ancient Egyptian architecture. Some Romantic depictions placed the incident in lush paradisal settings, notably one that is "the first successful realization of
Philipp Otto Runge's ambition to unite Christian orthodoxy with Romantic mysticism and his own personal cosmology", or, less appreciatively, one where "he seeks to express the working of divine forces in nature in a vague, emotional manner". ==Examples ==