Landscape with the Flight into Egypt

Around 1515 Antwerp was turning into the busiest port in northern Europe, and its art market had grown big enough that a painter could, for the first time, specialise. Joachim Patinir did exactly that. He became the first Western artist known to make landscape his real subject. Here the Holy Family flees to Egypt, Joseph leading the donkey that carries Mary and the newborn Jesus, but you have to search for them. They are small figures at the bottom of an enormous view of jagged rocks, winding rivers, and a distant sea seen from high above. This kind of panorama earned its own name, the world landscape, and Patinir more or less invented it. The sacred story is still there, just no longer the thing that fills the panel.