Landscape with Rest on the Flight into Egypt
(Bouvignes? 1475-80 - Antwerp 1524)
Traditionally attributed to Joachim Patenier, this panel was most likely executed by one of his followers around the first half of the 16th century. It depicts a landscape with the Holy Family, which according to legend rested in the shade of a tree during the flight into Egypt, a journey undertaken to save the baby Jesus from an edict of the perfidious Herod. The painting takes this tale – one of the most popular connected to Christ’s infancy – and interprets it in an original way, with many anecdotes which render the composition intimate and familiar, such as the angels laying a tablecloth at Mary’s feet and Joseph watering the donkey in a nearby stream. The minutely described scene is concentrated in a small portion of the foreground, which is absorbed by a broad landscape with a bridge, behind which soars a rugged mountain relief.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
second half of the 16th century
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, 25.5 x 32.7 x 5 cm
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room XI, nos 1-5); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 30. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1903/05 - Luigi Bartolucci (support);
- 1952 - Augusto Vermehren
Commentary
This painting was first mentioned in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1693, corresponding to entry ‘178’ in the inventory of that year, the number which in fact appears in the lower right hand corner of the panel. The compiler of that document ascribed it to an ‘uncertain’ artist, an attribution that was repeated in both the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario and in Giovanni Piancastelli’s profiles (1891).
Adolfo Venturi (1893) was the first critic to propose the name of Joachim Patenier; his idea was accepted with some reservations by Leo van Puyvelde (1950) but rejected by Paola della Pergola (1959). The work in fact appears to be chronologically later than and stylistically distant from the oeuvre of the Flemish painter. Those few paintings which can be ascribed to Patenier with certainty are indeed characterised by contrasts and the use of cold, bright colours, which render his compositions bizarre and full of suggestion.
According to Paola della Pergola (1959), the painting formed part of the estate of the elder Olimpia Aldobrandini; yet her thesis lacks supporting evidence.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 457;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 139;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 200;
- L. van Puyvelde, La Peinture Flamande à Rome, Bruxelles 1950, p. 84;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, p. 180, n. 267;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 87.
