Rest on the Flight to Egypt

Around 1630 Van Dyck was back home in Antwerp, in his early thirties, after several years working in Italy. He had spent that time studying the Venetians, above all Titian, and you can feel it in the warm colour and soft handling of a quiet devotional scene like this one. The subject is a pause in the biblical story: Mary, Joseph and the infant Christ resting on their flight into Egypt, escaping Herod's order to kill the children of Bethlehem. Van Dyck returned to this gentle, intimate theme more than once. This version entered the collection of Maximilian Emanuel, the elector of Bavaria, and now hangs in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.