Rest on the Flight into Egypt

This panel by Gerard David, painted around 1510 in oil on wood, shows the Virgin Mary seated with the Christ Child in her arms during a pause in the flight into Egypt. Although the Gospel of Matthew recounts the journey without mentioning any rest, the resting scene comes from apocryphal accounts, and it was a theme painters returned to across many periods. David treated it on several occasions with nearly identical compositions, which suggests these versions may not have been commissioned individually but made for the open market. In most of them, the focus falls on the Virgin nursing the Child before a deep forest backdrop. This version, however, arranges the scene differently: the Virgin feeds the Child a bunch of grapes, a common symbol of the Eucharist, while Joseph shakes a chestnut tree to bring down its nuts. The bluish landscape is painted with looser brushwork than in the Prado, Metropolitan and Antwerp examples, making it easy to see how the artist varied a single subject.

Painter

Gerard David

Date

1510

Medium

oil paint, panel

Dimensions

42 × 42 cm

Museum

Galería Nacional de Arte, Washington, D.C.

Movement

Early Netherlandish painting

Genre

religious art

Depicts

basket, Mary, donkey, Christ Child

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