Rest on the Flight into Egypt

By about 1604 Annibale Carracci had finished the enormous ceiling of the Farnese gallery in Rome and was, by most accounts, worn out and painting little. Small works like this one came from those late years. The holy family has stopped on the road to Egypt: Mary sleeps with the child while Joseph leads the donkey to drink, and the real subject spreads out behind them, a calm countryside of trees, water and a distant walled town. Carracci was helping invent this kind of composed, orderly landscape, where nature is arranged as carefully as any figure. The painting later belonged to Catherine the Great, which is how it hangs today in Saint Petersburg.