Flight into Egypt

The Gospel of Matthew tells the flight into Egypt in a few lines. An angel warns Joseph in a dream, and he takes the Child and his mother away by night. Almost everything in this panel is the painter's own addition. Joseph strides ahead in a red cloak, leading the donkey, with a wooden flask and a white bundle hung from a stick over his shoulder, the kit of a traveller of the 1490s. Mary rides wrapped in a dark green mantle, holding the Child close. Behind them a river winds between hills under a sky of patterned gold, and angels have settled among the branches of a young tree. The panel was the inner face of a small wing on the base of the high altar at Mondsee Abbey, and the museum dates it to before 1499.