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Lot Essay
The present picture was probably painted c. 1635, the decade in which Claude emerged as a total master having reached a remarkable consistency of aesthetic approach by the middle of the decade. Röthlisberger, publishing this painting for the first time in 1961, suggested a possible dating of 1638-9; however, subsequently, in publishing the corresponding drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. a), he opted for an earlier dating of c. 1635 saying that he 'now tend[s] to think that [the present picture] as with most early paintings not in the Liber, dates from before the regular beginning of the Liber in 1636 (Röthlisberger, loc. cit., 1986 b). The setting of the recto of the drawing corresponds with only minor differences: the angel is on the other side of the Virgin and the vista in the painting is slightly narrower. On the verso of the drawing the angel is depicted as it appears in the present picture. Röthlisberger's dating of the drawing to c. 1635 is further supported by its incisive penmanship, similar to that found in other early drawings and etchings, such as the compositionally related Rape of Europa of 1634 and the Brigand Landscape of 1635 (A. Blum, Les eaux-fortes de Claude Gellée, Paris, 1923, nos. 9 and 7).
A version of the present picture in an English private collection was first published by Michael Kitson in The Burlington Magazine in 1980. He writes that the artist's signature 'CLAVDE IV ROM' and a date, perhaps of 1635, can just be made out. H. Diane Russell, in the catalogue of the 1982-3 exhibition, also believes that both pictures can be dated to about 1635. The subject of the Rest on the Flight is one which the artist used in more drawings and paintings than any other. As Russell points out, 'the theme may or may not have had some special meaning for him, unknown to us', and it is a subject which lends itself so well to landscapes. Of Claude's other paintings depicting the Rest on the Flight, the most closely related to the present picture in their similar figure groupings are those in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome and the University Art Gallery, Notre Dame, Indiana (Röthlisberger, op. cit., 1961, II, figs. 96 and 97).
An old copy of the present picture without the figures was on the Genoese art market with G. Pateri in 1964.
A version of the present picture in an English private collection was first published by Michael Kitson in The Burlington Magazine in 1980. He writes that the artist's signature 'CLAVDE IV ROM' and a date, perhaps of 1635, can just be made out. H. Diane Russell, in the catalogue of the 1982-3 exhibition, also believes that both pictures can be dated to about 1635. The subject of the Rest on the Flight is one which the artist used in more drawings and paintings than any other. As Russell points out, 'the theme may or may not have had some special meaning for him, unknown to us', and it is a subject which lends itself so well to landscapes. Of Claude's other paintings depicting the Rest on the Flight, the most closely related to the present picture in their similar figure groupings are those in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome and the University Art Gallery, Notre Dame, Indiana (Röthlisberger, op. cit., 1961, II, figs. 96 and 97).
An old copy of the present picture without the figures was on the Genoese art market with G. Pateri in 1964.