The "Flight into Egypt" is a biblical episode that has captivated artists for centuries. It tells the story of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus fleeing to Egypt to escape King Herod's decree to kill all male children under the age of two in Bethlehem. This dramatic event has been interpreted in diverse ways, with artists often using landscape and symbolism to convey deeper meanings.
Adam Elsheimer's "The Flight into Egypt"
Elsheimer's Innovative Approach
In 1609, Adam Elsheimer created his "Flight into Egypt," a painting remarkable for its portrayal of the night sky. Measuring only 31 x 41 cm, it has been described as the first true moonlit scene and the first naturalistic depiction of the night sky in Renaissance art. Elsheimer's work broke with tradition in several ways:
- He set the scene at night, consistent with the Biblical account.
- He depicted the night sky in an extraordinarily detailed and naturalistic way.
The Holy Family is depicted on their way to Egypt by night. Mary and the child are astride a donkey, with Joseph close behind with a flaming torch. The family trudge around the edge of a moonlit lake to the apparent safety of a shepherd’s campfire in the woods. Above is a huge expanse of sky, with over a thousand individual stars.
Composition and Symbolism
Elsheimer composed the painting very carefully. The scene is divided by the diagonal sweep of the Milky Way, drawing attention to the Holy Family. This angle is reinforced by the line of the trees. At the same time, the painting also recedes from the foreground at left to the background at right.
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The three clumps of trees also mark the three elements of the picture, which in themselves comprise separate genre scenes - the pastoral idyll of the shepherds, the family scene and the moonlit landscape.
Each of those elements has its own source of light ~ the torch for the family, the campfire for the shepherds, and the moon, stars and reflections for the lake. These individual scenes are unified by the all-encompassing sky, and by the sparks which float upwards from the shepherds’ fire to seemingly join the stars in the Milky Way.
Elsheimer injects strong symbolic significance into the human actors in the painting. The shepherds at the campfire are a reminder of the shepherds who followed the angel’s urging to travel to Bethlehem to witness Christ’s birth.
The constellation of Leo, traditionally associated with kingship and strength, is placed centrally over the Holy Family, and its brightest star (Regulus or Little King) is placed over the Christ child. The other main constellation, the Great Bear, is associated with Diana, goddess of the moon, chastity and virginity, all virtues that are also associated with Mary.
Scientific Realism
Elsheimer’s complex interweaving of these compositional and symbolic elements is designed to bridge the vastness of the sky with the domestic intimacy of the fleeing family, and to provide reassurance to the viewer that they are under divine guidance and protection.
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As Deborah Howard has pointed out, Elsheimer has carefully illustrated the irregular, cratered features on the surface of Moon and, for the first time, managed to resolve the Milky Way into myriads of individual stars. In addition, the relative positions of the stars in the constellations of Ursa Major (the Great Bear, Big Dipper and Plough) and of Leo are accurately represented, as is the prominence of the brightest star of Leo (Regulus). This is clearly not just a scattering of stars at random.
These features have prompted the belief that Elsheimer may even have painted the sky as it appeared on a particular night - reputedly, the sky over Rome on 16 June 1609. Given this timeline, and the fact that Elsheimer was a notoriously slow painter, it seems a moot point whether he could actually have based his painting on a Galilean telescopic view, unless he had advance knowledge of Galileo’s work in progress.
Elsheimer’s new kind of composition -a low horizon and diagonals moving obliquely into background, had a major influence on landscape painting in Italy and Northern Europe.
The Flight into Egypt has continued to interest artists right up to the present day, with their works often reflecting contemporary social, artistic or historical knowledge or concerns. More recently, the persecuted status of the fleeing family has evoked works based on current issues of homelessness and the refugee crisis.
In his Flight, Elsheimer introduced two novel aspects to a familiar theme. First, he depicted the scene at night. Second, he relied on a completely naturalistic, closely observed astronomically-consistent setting. In effect, the artist’s scientific realism lends credibility to the biblical account. This enabled him to do away with typical religious motifs such as haloes, angels or heavenly light, while at the same time imbuing the work with rich religious symbolism. His melding of religion, art and science is a particularly impressive achievement, particularly for such a small painting.
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Rembrandt's Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) also depicted this scene in his "Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt" (1647). In order to save the Christ Child, an angel came to Joseph in a dream and told him to flee with his family to Egypt. This subject occupies only a small place in Rembrandt’s painting. The artist chose to place more emphasis on the mesmerising atmosphere of a hilly landscape at night, illuminated by multiple light sources.
Rembrandt's "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt"
Lievens' Peaceful Depiction
Lievens offers a peaceful depiction of this biblical episode. Mary is seated on the ground holding the Christ Child in her arms while a patient Saint Joseph stands beside them leaning on the donkey’s flank. The composition is organised through the diagonal line of the river that starts in the foreground and leads the eye into the background until it reaches a city in the centre of the composition.
The perspective is also reinforced by two rocky outcrops that impede the course of the river, over which is a rustic bridge that emphasises the pictorial depth. Lievens uses a horizontal format appropriate to landscapes and constructs the scene through the use of ochre tones in the rocks, ground and vegetation. Only the sky and the bright crimson of Mary’s dress stand out against the uniform tonality of this scene.
Jan Lievens' "The Flight into Egypt"
Carpaccio and Idealized Landscapes
The Flight into Egypt provided an opportunity for Vittore Carpaccio, like other Venetian artists of his generation, to experiment with idealized landscapes. The overall impact is impressive: rolling hills; jagged peaks; elegant trees; water calm as a millpond.
But this landscape does far more than allow Carpaccio to showcase his artistic skills. In the background on the far left of the panel, a prominent rugged mountain appears behind the vibrant tree which connects heaven and earth, the divine and the human. In the centre of the composition, a bridge straddles the river, reminding the viewer that water is a barrier, but one which can be crossed. Joseph, veering off from the road, tramples on lush greenery, a common symbol of Edenic paradise in visual art.
Vittore Carpaccio's "The Flight into Egypt"
Like all good stories, the Flight into Egypt can be interpreted on a number of levels that can be elaborated far beyond the basic plot - issues of persecution, refuge, faith, inner dignity and even humanity’s place in the natural world.
