Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Around 1630 van Dyck had more work in Antwerp than one pair of hands could finish, altarpieces, portraits and small devotional pictures all at once, so like any busy master of the time he kept a workshop of assistants who could take one of his designs through to a finished canvas. This is one of those canvases. The composition is his, the Holy Family halted on the road into Egypt while small angels dance and play music in front of them, and both the gallery here and the RKD in The Hague, the Dutch institute that catalogues Flemish painting, credit the picture to his studio rather than his own hand. The version he painted himself is in Munich. Schelte Adams à Bolswert engraved the composition for the Antwerp print trade, and of all the painted versions this wide one is the closest to that print.