Having fled Judea to escape the persecution of King Herod, the Holy Family here rests on their way to Egypt. Blake places them within a lyrical landscape lit by the setting sun and indicates their destination with distant pyramids. Since the biblical text that mentions this journey includes few details, Blake drew upon established devotional traditions to compose the scene. The Virgin seated on the ground to nurse the infant Christ recalls the Renaissance type of the Madonna of Humility. The enormous, sheltering palm tree is described in the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew as having bowed its branches to furnish the travelers with fruit, and the donkey is derived from a seventeenth-century engraving of the subject.
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Signature: at lower right, in brown ink or watercolor: "1806 WB inv"
(?) Thomas Butts (British); (?) Thomas Butts Jr. (British); Richard Monckton Milnes (British), by 1863; Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe (British), son of the preceding, sold 1906; Vendor: Carfax & Co. (British)Vendor: Through Roger Eliot Fry (British)
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Twenty-seven drawings by William Blake. Carl J. Smalley, Mcpherson, Kansas, 1925, illustrated (no plate number).
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Walter Mehring European Drawings from the Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Portfolio of Collotype Reproductions [Vol. 1: Italian Drawings; Vol. 2: Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, French, and British drawings; Vol. 3: "New Series": Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, French, and British drawings]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3 vols., New York, 1942–44, cat. no. 64, vol. 2, ill.
Anne Carlisle English Drawings: XIX Century. New York: Hyperion Press, 1950, p. 78, ill.
Geoffrey Keynes, George Goyder William Blake's Illustrations to the Bible. William Blake Trust, Clairvaux, 1957, fig. no. 96b, p. 30.
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Albert S. Roe "The Thunder of Egypt." in William Blake: Essays for S. Foster Damon. Alvin H. Rosenfeld, 1969, fig. no. 18, pp. 181-2.
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