Flight to Egypt

Guido Reni painted this Flight into Egypt around 1622, and it hangs today in the picture gallery of the Girolamini in Naples. He made it during his second stay in the city in 1621, when he was weighing a commission to decorate the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, a project he eventually turned down. The link between the picture and the Girolamini complex is not documented with certainty, though it probably connects to a gift of some fifty-seven works made by Giovan Domenico Lercaro, a wealthy tailor and textile merchant from Monopoli working in Naples, between 1622 and 1623. His will required the donated works to be displayed in the choir and sacristy, and this painting was placed in the church choir. Reni made other versions. One, close in date, which the biographer Malvasia records, adds a small putto in the lower right who turns toward Mary and offers her a flower, a detail absent from the Naples canvas. Another, identical but of weaker quality, belongs to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

Painter

Guido Reni

Date

1622

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

157 × 131 cm

Museum

Picture gallery of the Girolamini, Naples

Genre

religious art

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