Who painted The Flight into Egypt?

The Flight into Egypt was painted by Follower of Joachim Patinir in c. 1550/1575.

Where can I see The Flight into Egypt?

The Flight into Egypt is held by National Gallery of Art.

What movement is The Flight into Egypt?

The Flight into Egypt is associated with Mannerism.

Artwork

The Flight into Egypt

Follower of Joachim Patinir , 1562

The Flight into Egypt is an oil painting by the Mannerist artist Follower of Joachim Patinir. It dates from 1562 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.

About this work

Subject & Meaning

The painting depicts the Flight into Egypt, a New Testament episode in which the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and the Christ Child, flee Bethlehem to escape King Herod's massacre of the innocents (Matthew 2:13–15). The work belongs to the religious genre and treats the journey as a moment of divinely guided travel through a landscape, a theme especially associated with the Netherlandish tradition of Joachim Patinir.

The small panel format is typical of cabinet pictures intended for private devotion, allowing the viewer to meditate on the Holy Family's vulnerability and trust in divine protection. As a religious image, the work functions both as narrative illustration of scripture and as a devotional object, inviting contemplation of the Incarnation and the saving purpose of Christ's early life.

The attribution to an anonymous artist working in the manner of Patinir suggests the painting participates in a wider iconographic tradition in which the Flight into Egypt combined sacred narrative with evocative landscape symbolism.

Technique & Style

No further details about the artist's handling, surface condition, or specific stylistic characteristics are provided in the sources.

The painting is executed in oil applied to a wooden panel support. The medium is described as oil on panel, indicating a traditional Northern European technique of the mid-sixteenth century. The work measures approximately 23.6 cm in height and 15 cm in width.

It is classified as a religious painting depicting the Flight into Egypt. No further details about the artist's handling, surface condition, or specific stylistic characteristics are provided in the sources.

History & Provenance

The Flight into Egypt is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as part of the Samuel H. Kress Collection. It entered the Kress Collection on 24 September 1953, when the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased it from Frederick Mont of New York; the Foundation subsequently gave the painting to the National Gallery of Art in 1961.

Before reaching the United States, the panel belonged to the Imperial collection at the Belvedere Palace, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, where it is recorded by 1783 in Christian von Mechel's catalogue of the imperial picture gallery. It passed to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, around 1891, remaining there until it was struck from the gallery's inventory in February 1952 prior to its acquisition by the Kress Foundation.

Overview

This oil on panel painting, titled "The Flight into Egypt," depicts a family journeying through a natural setting. Characteristic of the Renaissance period, the composition features a woman cradling an infant while seated on a donkey, accompanied by a man on foot. The scene unfolds within a rugged landscape, with distant architectural elements and a body of water visible, all rendered with the nuanced capabilities of oil paints on a wooden support.