The Flight into Egypt

The Flight into Egypt, based on the Gospel of Saint Matthew (2:13–15), was a favorite subject of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painters, and Tiepolo was no exception. In fact, he was the last great master to explore the theme. Throughout his career he was drawn to the subject, treating it in one of his earliest paintings (about 1720), now in the Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego, California; in six pen-and-ink drawings (ca. 1735) from the dismembered album that once belonged to Prince Alexis Orloff; and in the altarpiece (about 1745) in the small church of Santi Massimo e Osvaldo in Padua. He executed the present canvas, and three other closely related paintings of the Flight and the Rest on the Flight, during the very last years of his life.

In a rocky landscape, the Virgin, Saint Joseph, and a donkey stare at a guardian angel, who prostrates himself on the ground before them on the bank of a river (probably the Jordan or the Nile) that they have just crossed. The boatman bows his head in reverence; in the lower right there is a stone with an illegible inscription. The related canvases (see Notes) variously show the Holy Family in a boat punted across the river by the angel (Museu Nacional de Art Antiga, Lisbon); pausing on the crest of a hill overlooking a city reminiscent of Madrid (Bellagio Study and Conference Center); and resting in a menacing mountain landscape (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart).

Tiepolo’s red and white chalk drawing of a donkey in three positions (Christie’s, New York, January 28, 2020, lot 70) links several of these canvases: the animal at left appears in The Met and Stuttgart paintings, the middle animal in the Bellagio and Lisbon paintings (in the latter it appears in reverse orientation–notably the verso of the drawing includes a black chalk tracing of the outline used in this painting).

The four canvases recall the suite of twenty-four etchings by Tiepolo’s son Domenico that were gathered in an album titled Idee pittoresche sopra la fuga in Egitto (Picturesque Ideas on the Flight into Egypt), published in 1753 with a dedication to the prince-bishop of Würzburg (see Russell 1972, nos. 59–92). Following the accounts of the Flight into Egypt in the Golden Legend and the Apocrypha of the New Testament, Domenico’s etchings show Saint Joseph rousing his young wife and child from their comfortable Venetian-looking quarters, escaping with them at night from a stable where they picked up a donkey, traveling overland and across bodies of water, and finally reaching the safety of a walled town. Some writers believe Tiepolo’s four canvases formed a similar set, perhaps intended for the decoration of a small chapel (Morassi 1962, Pedrocco 1993, Giacometti 1994). This is unlikely, even though all four are almost exactly the same size and share the same handling and mood, because the protagonists are depicted inconsistently: Saint Joseph, for example, appears as a young man in the Bellagio canvas and as an old man in the Lisbon and Met pictures. Most likely the paintings are variations on a theme, similar to Tiepolo’s countless sketches of the Holy Family that show his inexhaustible inventiveness (Brown 1993, Christiansen 1996). In fact, although the four works were probably sold individually, they were undoubtedly conceived as sequential episodes and brilliantly exhibit Tiepolo’s narrative approach to subject matter.

The dating of the painting to near the end of Tiepolo’s life is confirmed by the affinity of its style to that of his modelli for the altarpieces of San Pascual Baylon (Courtauld Gallery, London) as well as by the similarities of the composition to those of a pair of small canvases from Tiepolo’s Spanish period, the Annunciation and Abraham Visited by Angels (collection of the duquesa de Villahermosa at Pedrola, near Zaragoza). The poses of the statuesque Virgin and the prostrate angel in The Met's canvas echo those of the Virgin, angels, and Abraham in the Villahermosa pictures. They share, moreover, the same silvery tonality and trembling yet sure handling of paint that distinguish Tiepolo’s final easel paintings.

[2019; adapted from Fahy 2005]

[Niccolò Leonelli, Venice, later St. Petersburg, by 1814–d. 1816; his estate sale, Salle Philarmonique, St. Petersburg, May 4ff., 1817, no. 140]; State Museum, Poltava, Ukraine (until 1929/30); Mr. and Mrs. David Birnbaum (later Bingham), Felden Lodge, Boxmoor, Hertfordshire (in 1938); [Edward Speelman (Art Gallery A.G., Zug, Switzerland), London, until 1982; sold to Wrightsman]; Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York (1982–his d. 1986); Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, New York (1986–d. 2019; cat., 2005, no. 29)

Rotterdam. Museum Boymans. "Meesterwerken uit vier Eeuwen, 1400–1800," June 25–October 15, 1938, no. 189 (lent by a Dutch private collection).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bellini to Tiepolo: Summer Loans at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 29–August 31, 1993, unnum. checklist (as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt").

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Giambattista Tiepolo, 1696–1770," January 24–April 27, 1997, no. 57d (lent by a private collection, New York).

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT, BY TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.

N. S. Trivas. "Masterpieces from Dutch Private Collections: At the Boymans Museum, Rotterdam." Connoisseur 102 (September 1938), no. IX, ill.

Giuseppe Fiocco. Opere d'arte. Vol. 10, Pitture del Settecento italiano in Portogallo. Rome, 1940, p. 12, mentions it in connection with the two works then in the Pinto-Basto collection, Lisbon (now Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart).

Antonio Morassi. G. B. Tiepolo: His Life and Work. London, 1955, p. 150, under pl. 92, as in a private collection, Berlin; associates it with the two works then in the Pinto-Basto collection, which he dates about 1762–70, and with the one in Bellagio.

Antonio Morassi. A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G. B. Tiepolo. London, 1962, pp. 5, 16, fig. 37, as formerly in a private collection, Berlin, in the State Museum of Poltava, Ukraine, until 1930, and now in New York; dates all four works (MMA, Stuttgart, Bellagio, and Lisbon) about 1762–70 and refers to them as a series.

Egidio Martini. La pittura veneziana del Settecento. Venice, 1964, pp. 70, 73, 213 n. 151, pl. 147, as "Episodio della fuga in Egitto," in a private collection, Berlin; dates it to the same time as "The Angel Appearing to Abraham and Sarah" in the Crespi collection, Milan.

Anna Pallucchini in L'opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo. Milan, 1968, p. 133, no. 290, ill., uses the symbol indicating whereabouts unknown, but also lists it as private collection, New York; dates all four works about 1766–70; notes that Domenico Tiepolo would reprise this theme in a series of prints; observes that both the pose of the angel and the silvery tones closely resemble those in the "Annunciation" in the Luna-Villahermosa collection, Madrid; calls the Bellagio picture a quasi pendant.

H. Diane Russell. Rare Etchings by Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1972, p. 95, notes that Domenico Tiepolo's series of twenty-four etchings of the Flight into Egypt, published in 1753, predates Giovanni Battista's paintings of the same theme and suggests that the son's work may have served as inspiration for the father.

Egidio Martini. La pittura del Settecento veneto. Udine, 1982, pp. 59, 511 n. 199.

Michael Levey. Giambattista Tiepolo: His Life and Art. New Haven, 1986, p. 269.

William L. Barcham. Giambattista Tiepolo. New York, 1992, p. 124, under no. 40, suggests that the small devotional works Tiepolo produced in Spain during the last years of his life were made for members of the royal court.

Massimo Gemin and Filippo Pedrocco. Giambattista Tiepolo: i dipinti, opera completa. Venice, 1993, pp. 204, 208, 497–98, no. 533, ill., refer to the four pictures as a series.

Beverly Louise Brown. Giambattista Tiepolo: Master of the Oil Sketch. Exh. cat., Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. Milan, 1993, p. 324, fig. 159, under no. 62, states that although "the four scenes have been described as a narrative sequence. . . each picture stands alone as a distinct moment in the Holy Family's long and arduous journey to Egypt".

Olimpia Theodoli in The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Jane Martineau and Andrew Robison. Exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London. New Haven, 1994, p. 507, under no. 230.

Margherita Giacometti in The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Jane Martineau and Andrew Robison. Exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London. New Haven, 1994, p. 504, under no. 131, refers to the four pictures as a series.

Keith Christiansen et al. in Giambattista Tiepolo, 1696–1770. Ed. Keith Christiansen. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 286, 336, 338, 343, no. 57d, ill. p. 342 (color) [Italian ed., "Giambattista Tiepolo, 1696–1996," Milan], believes it is just as likely that the four paintings were made separately either for individual collectors or for the artist's personal pleasure as that they were commissioned as a series.

Stéphane Loire and José de Los Llanos in Giambattista Tiepolo, 1696–1770. Exh. cat., Musée du Petit Palais. Paris, 1998, p. 236, under no. 80.

Filippo Pedrocco. Giambattista Tiepolo. Milan, 2002, pp. 311–13, no. 286, ill.

Burton Fredericksen. "Niccolò Leonelli and the Export of Tiepolo Sketches to Russia." Burlington Magazine 144 (October 2002), pp. 623–24, fig. 36, notes that it was probably in the artist's estate when he died, and was thus possibly not a commissioned work, and that it would then have been inherited by his son Domenico and returned to Venice.

Everett Fahy in The Wrightsman Pictures. Ed. Everett Fahy. New York, 2005, pp. 100–102, no. 29, ill. (color).

The Private Collection of Jayne Wrightsman. Christie's, New York. October 14, 2020, p. 29.

Old Master & British Drawings, Including Works from the Collection of Jean Bonna. Christie's, New York. January 28, 2020, p. 66, under no. 70, fig. (color), presents a related drawing, "Three Studies of a Donkey" (1762–70).

Tiepolo painted three other closely related canvases depicting this theme during his final years:
Bellagio Study and Conference Center. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Oil on canvas, 23 5⁄8 × 17 3⁄4 in. (60 × 45 cm).
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon. The Flight into Egypt. Oil on canvas, 22 1⁄2 × 17 3⁄8 in. (57 × 44 cm).
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (3303). The Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Oil on canvas, 21 7⁄8 × 16 3⁄8 in. (55.5 × 41.5 cm).

This work may not be lent, by terms of its acquisition by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.