Landscape with the Flight into Egypt

The Holy Family is easy to miss here. Mary rides the donkey in the lower right corner, almost at the frame, while the middle of this large canvas, more than two metres wide, belongs to a river, with fishermen dragging a net through the shallows, boats, a waterfall and a fortified town on a hill.

Domenichino painted it around 1620 to 1623, and the hands it passed through over the next half century lead from Rome to the French court. It may have been bought in Rome in 1646 for Cardinal Mazarin, the chief minister of France. In 1661 or 1662 Mazarin's heir gave it to Louis-Henri de Loménie, count of Brienne, a young secretary of state and an avid collector of pictures. In 1668 it was sold to Louis XIV by Gaspard Marsy, one of the sculptors who were then starting work on the fountains in the gardens of Versailles.