The Flight into Egypt: small Plate

This charming early etching is one of the smallest of Rembrandt’s religious prints. A popular subject in Renaissance and Baroque art, the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt is recounted in a brief passage in Matthew 2:12-14. Prompted by an angel in a dream that King Herod intends to kill his son, Joseph departs in the middle of the night with his family. Rembrandt draws upon the tradition of setting the journey in a forest, a notable precedent being Martin Schongauer’s engraving of 1470-74, which depicts the Holy Family in an imagined Levantine landscape, replete with exotic date palms and dragon trees. In Rembrandt’s version, Joseph leads the donkey carrying Mary and the infant, through a Northern European woodland, with a gnarled tree truck, possibly an oak, looming above them, against what appears to be star-speckled night sky. Some commentators have argued that the grainy tone of the sky is accidental and the result of a flawed etching process, while others considered it a desired effect, achieved by sulphur tinting. Whether intended or not, the tone in the upper part of the subject certainly adds to the crepuscular atmosphere of the scene. The success of the plate however lies mainly in Rembrandt’s subtle characterisations: Joseph’s stooped yet quietly determined figure; Mary’s protective embrace of the infant Jesus; and the quizzical expression of the patient donkey, who gazes directly at the viewer. Rembrandt emphasizes the ordinariness of the scene - a heavy-laden, tired family on a journey - and in so doing connects the story with a universal human experience.