Rest on the Flight into Egypt (early 1640s): Art, History and Details

Rest on the Flight into Egypt (early 1640s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Claude Lorrain (French, 1604–1682).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One of the most influential landscape painters of the early modern era, Lorrain was a master of the “ideal landscape,” which combined lush foliage and a tranquil atmosphere with allusions to an idyllic, imaginary past. The intention was to create views more beautiful and harmonious than nature itself. In the foreground of this soaring landscape, the Holy Family rests on a shady bank as kneeling angels offer fruit to the Christ child. Landscape paintings like this were much in demand among wealthy collectors throughout Europe, for whom these expansive idealized scenes represented a calm retreat from their hectic city lives.

Object facts

• Title: Rest on the Flight into Egypt
• Date: early 1640s
• Creator attribution: Claude Lorrain (French, 1604–1682)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 239 x 185 x 12 cm (94 1/8 x 72 13/16 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 208 x 152.5 cm (81 7/8 x 60 1/16 in.)
• Collection: P - French 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1962.151

A detail from the museum

Lorrain placed this Middle Eastern biblical event in the Roman countryside.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gellée, Claude, and Henry S. Francis. “Landscape with Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 49, no. 10 (December 1962): 231–235.
• Saisselin, R. G. “Art Is an Imitation of Nature.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 52, no. 2 (February 1965): 34–44.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.