The Flight into Egypt

Bloemaert’s religious output was considerable, as he received numerous commissions from the Catholic circles that predominated in the city of Utrecht and he himself professed the Catholic faith. The work depicts the theme of the rest on the Flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15) and shows the Virgin with the Child and St Joseph in the shade of a leafy tree and surrounded by kneeling angels that worship and appear to protect the Holy Family. The landscape is reduced to the monumental tree, the main feature of the scene, and a luminous sky in which angels and cherubim flutter in varied postures. The combination of the Gospel theme of the Flight into Egypt and the devotional image of the Mother suckling the Child was created by Flemish painters of the 15th century, and there are known examples by G�rard David and Joachim Patenier.

During his initial period Bloemaert painted whimsical forms and adopted the cold palette of the Haarlem Mannerists and of the school of Fontainebleau, with whose style he may have come into contact during his stay in France in the 1580s. But in the first decade of the 17th century his style evolved towards a calmer and more delicate language and a concern for the beauty of figures, chromatic harmony and luminosity. These qualities are found in the present painting, in which the figures have an endearing, gentle appearance that recalls the art of Italian painters like Correggio and Barocci, whom the artist followed chiefly through engravings. A further factor related to this development is the influence of the tempered classicism that was imported from Italy by Goltzius and which Bloemaert espoused, as may be seen in this work, before shifting in 1620 towards the tenebrist naturalism of Caravaggio, which he learned from his own pupils, among them Van Honthorst.