17th century, Return from flight to Egypt

17th century
Return from the flight to Egypt
Oil on copper, 52.5 x 41.5 cm - with frame 66.5 x 55.5 cm

The work represents the biblical episode of the return of the Holy Family from the flight to Egypt, which took place in cause of the persecution hatched by Herod; the episode is narrated in the initial part of the Gospel of Matthew, commonly called the "Gospel of childhood" (Mt 1-2). The fact starts from a providential warning that Joseph receives in a dream. The narration continues with the story of the Holy Family, who remained in Egypt until the death of Herod. Egypt, due to its proximity to Israel, therefore represented the most immediate refuge for those who fled the tyranny of the king of Judea. The Holy Family only returned from Egypt when he learned of Herod's death and his son Archelaus' rise to government in Judea, when Tetrarch Herod Antipas ruled in Nazareth in Galilee. Thus the Holy Family made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem during Easter, when Jesus, at the age of 12 and therefore just before his religious age (Bar Mitzva), had to appear before the Masters. An Apocryphal Gospel reports that he was examined on all the sciences studied at the time. The scene presented here clearly shows the Child, now a young man, accompanied by the hands of his parents towards his future and assisted by God the Father and the Holy Spirit who watch over him from Heaven. The work is characterized by the chromatic liveliness deployed in the accentuated colors of the landscape, with dark and incisive hues, as well as those of the garments of the three protagonists in the foreground, defined by falciate drapes and well modeled on the physiognomy of the bodies. The light that invades the landscape, on the other hand, is divine and pierces the sky penetrating the earthly reality protagonist of the narration. At the end of the comparison, analogous works by Pieter Paul Rubens on the market and in international museum collections are mentioned at the end of the comparison.