Studies for a Rest on the Flight into Egypt, a study of the same in a landscape setting and further studies of the Virgin, the Christ Child and a cherub (recto); Rapid figure studies (verso)

Cantarini often studied a subject several times on the same sheet. Here he depicted the Rest on the Flight twice: once in isolation in the foreground and once in a landscape setting, enclosed by a framework, as the artist often did (for a comparable example, see M. Mancigotti, Simone Cantarini il Pesarese, Pesaro, 1975, fig. 153). He further studied the Virgin, the Child and a cherub in different positions. The latter corresponds closely to the Christ Child shown in a sheet of studies of The Virgin and the Child and a Lamentation, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-T-1951-327 (R)).

The different studies on the present sheet are very close in approach to those in The Virgin and the Child, a drawing of similar size (27.3 x 20 cm.) datable circa 1642/48, now in the Art Institute of Chicago (Inv. 1922.66; M. Mancigotti, op. cit., fig. 145). Cantarini also treated the Rest on the Flight in his paintings and prints, the most famous picture of the subject probably being the one in the Louvre (Inv. 175) after which the artist made an etching in reverse (Bartsch 6; M. Mancigotti, op. cit., figs. 55 and 110).