The Flight into Egypt

Dated by Röthlisberger to 1633-5, this newly-discovered landscape belongs stylistically to a group of Riposi and Flights produced by Claude in the 1630s, in which the compositional format of a vista enclosed by two masses of trees is employed with regularity. The subject was a particular favourite of the artist. As H. Diane Russell points out in the catalogue of the 1982-3 exhibition, 'the theme may or may not have had some special meaning for him, unknown to us', and it was undeniably a subject that lent itself well to his landscapes. Other early treatments of the subject can be seen in the copper of circa 1631 in the collection of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle, the larger canvas of circa 1635 in the Clowes collection, Indianapolis, and the picture of 1636/7 in the collection of Lord St. Oswald, Nostell Priory. In all these, as is the case here, the protagonists are shown in the foreground travelling across the picture plane with the figure of Saint Joseph pointing the way ahead.

We are grateful to Professor Marcel Röthlisberger for confirming the attribution on the basis of a transparency.