La Fuite en Égypte

In December 1610 the German painter Adam Elsheimer died in Rome, 32 years old and in debt. Rubens had known him there, and wrote to a friend soon afterwards that he had never felt his heart more pierced by grief, and that in small figures, in landscapes and above all in night scenes the man had had no equal. Elsheimer's last great picture was a Flight into Egypt set under a real night sky, with the Milky Way laid across it. Rubens made his own four years later on an oak panel you could carry under one arm, another night piece, though he gives the Holy Family and the angels around them far more of the picture than Elsheimer had. He signed it with his full name and the year, 1614, which he rarely troubled to do on anything this small.