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While the Old Testament contains
a number of dramatic stories that climax in scenes of flight,
exodus or expulsion, the New Testament offers only one story.
However, it is a story that has been deeply imprinted on Christians'
historical consciousness and has become one of the most popular
themes of Christian art. Paradoxically, this story (the Holy
Family's flight to Egypt) is told very laconically in the
Bible, even though it is one of the key episodes in the early
childhood of Jesus Christ. Matthew the Evangelist describes
how Jesus was miraculously born to Mary and Joseph (conceived
by the Holy Ghost) in Bethlehem during the reign of King Herod
and how the Wise Men of the East recognised the "new-born
king of the Jews" in the infant and thus came to pay homage
and present their gifts to him (Matthew 1: 18-2, 12). The
Evangelist then continues with the following words:
Now when they had departed, behold
an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying,
"Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt,
and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek
the young Child to destroy Him." When he arose, he took
the young Child and His mother by night and departed for
Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod (Matthew 2:13-15).
These, then, are the episodes that
form the spine of the history of Jesus Christ's childhood:
birth - massacre of innocent children - flight to Egypt -
the Holy Family's stay in Egypt - their return "to the Galilee
region". This New Testament drama corresponds equally well
- and poetically - to the mission of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees: assistance to the needy not only
during flight or exodus but also during the search for temporary
shelter in exile and ultimately, upon their return to their
original country. In this sense the New Testament story of
the Holy Family's flight to Egypt and their return is a model
situation whose significance reaches beyond the particular
historical period and differences between religions and denominations.
It is simply "the flight of all flights".
One need not be especially knowledgeable about art history
to realise that the vast majority of "Flights to Egypt" as
they are known in European art from the early Middle Ages
to contemporary times, with the wide range of scenes and the
richness of detail, differ markedly from the terse description
in the Gospel of Matthew. The early Middle Ages slowly and
laboriously searched for visual compositions that could depict
the biblical text in a comprehensive and understandable way
(mosaics in the Church of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome, frescoes
in Castelseprio). They began to gain a stable appearance perhaps
in the 8th century. The group, Mary with the infant Jesus
on a donkey and Joseph, either leading or closing the group
of pilgrims, typically moves from left to right. This is the
"Flight to Egypt" as we know it from a whole series of works
of art, particularly from the 9th to the 12th centuries -
for example from one of the wooden reliefs in the Church of
Hl. Maria im Kapitol in Cologne from the mid-11th century.
Their most notable characteristic is the discrepancy between
the direction of the group depicted in parallel with the surface
of the canvas or relief and the en face (full-face) depiction
of the Madonna and Child. This is a conflict between a hieratic
cult image and the narrative tendency represented by the donkey
seen from a side view. Simply put: the cult en face versus
a narrative profile.
The Flight to Egypt by Bonanus on one leaf of the bronze doors
of the cathedral in Pisa roughly one hundred years later is
similar in manner. However, in this case Joseph's position
in front of Mary is taken by a large palm tree, which is leaning
very visibly towards the Mother of God on the donkey, as if
nature itself wished to protect her. This motif, known from
dozens if not hundreds of medieval and later works of art,
characterises another change in the manner of depicting the
Holy Family's journey into exile in Egypt: the frontal stiffness
of the protagonists is relieved by Mary's position, who sits
on the donkey like a true equestrian while lovingly caring
for the comfort of her son. She is no longer a "transported"
statue, but a human being riding on a donkey. This change
has two causes: on one hand, the development of artists' representative
abilities; on the other hand, an increased interest in what
Matthew the Evangelist overlooked in his text - the details
and reality that would help a believer to better imagine and
thus "bring closer" the infancy of Jesus Christ. This information
came primarily from the apocrypha - papers that were written
as early as the 2nd century A.D. with the aim of filling in
gaps in the content of those gospels which are today identified
as canonical. An important group among the apocrypha is the
"Gospels of the Infancy". Sometime between the 8th and 9th
centuries, the most important of these - the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew
- was written. Based on older literary sources, it describes
the circumstances and course of the Holy Family's journey
to Egypt with an unusually high level of detail. One of the
things we read in this text (Chapter 20) is that fatigue,
hunger and thirst fell upon Mary on the third day of the flight
and so she sat down in the shade of a palm tree. Because the
tree was too high for Joseph to reach its fruits, the child
Jesus said:
"O tree, bend thy branches, and
refresh my mother with thy fruit." And immediately at these
words the palm bent its top down to the very feet of the
blessed Mary; and they gathered from it fruit, with which
they were all refreshed. And after they had gathered all
its fruit, […] Jesus said: […] "Raise thyself, O palm tree,
and open from thy roots a vein of water which has been hid
in the earth, and let the waters flow, so that we may be
satisfied from thee." And it rose up immediately and at
its roots there began to come forth a spring of water exceedingly
clear and cool. And when they saw the spring of water they
rejoiced with great joy and were satisfied, themselves and
all their cattle and their beasts. Wherefore they gave thanks
to God.
The miracle with the palm tree and
spring has been one of the standard motifs illustrating the
flight to Egypt since at least the 9th century. On Bonanus'
doors in Pisa the palm tree seems to bend of its own accord,
similarly to Albrecht Dürer's famous wood engraving from approximately
1504-05. In Martin Schongauer's equally influential wood engraving
little angels bend the branches of the palm tree and in yet
other depictions Joseph himself bends them to the earth. No
matter how it is depicted in various illustrations, the popularity
of the miracle with the palm tree is equal only to the motif
of the fall and destruction of idols from antiquity upon the
Holy Family's entry to the land of Egypt. Once again it is
described by the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (Chapters
22-24), according to which the trio of refugees entered a
temple in the city of Sotinen where "there were three hundred
and sixty-five idols to each of which on its own day divine
honours and sacred rites were paid":
When most blessed Mary went into the temple with the child
all of the idols prostrated themselves on the ground so
that […] they thus plainly showed that they were nothing.
[…] Then Affrodosius, the governor of the city, when news
of this was brought to him, went to the temple […], he went
up to the blessed Mary, who was carrying the Lord in her
bosom, and adored Him […]. At that moment all of the people
of that same city believed in the Lord God through Jesus
Christ.
We also find this motif in many works
of art illustrating the Flight to Egypt. Idols are felled
in an anonymous Brussels painting from the period around 1515
in the collection of the Šternberk na Moravě castle, similarly
to the 22nd page of the series Idee Pittoresche sopra la Fugga
in Egitto created by Gian Domenico Tiepolo in 1750-55. The
nude pagan idol falling from the column identifies the journey
of the Holy Family on the left side of a painting created
in 1503-06 by the so-called Master from Frankfurt, probably
Hendrik van Wueluwe (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart). But in this
case the destruction of the idol does not accompany a depiction
of the story of the merciful palm tree, but the legend of
the field of grain - an uncommonly popular tale whose literary
sources have unfortunately not been identified to date. According
to this text, on their flight from Bethlehem Mary and Joseph
passed farmers who were sowing grain. The sowed field miraculously
grew overnight so that the field was ready to harvest in the
morning. Thus Herod's mercenaries were deterred from further
pursuit by the "truthful" information that the refugees had
passed this place when the farmers were sowing the field.
In 1573 Gillis Mostaert depicted yet another apocryphal story,
this time on the basis of the Arabian Gospel of the Infancy
or its Latin version by Ludolph the Saxon in his Life of Jesus
Christ from the 15th century. It says here that bandits fell
upon the Holy Family on the journey to Egypt but one of them
let them go free and was rewarded for this with the promise
of life after death in paradise. High medieval texts, like
that by Ludolph or the somewhat older Legenda aurea by Jacobus
de Voragine, present readers with a concentrated analogy of
older apocryphal tales and legends. Thus, in the Golden Legend
we read that
Joseph, warned by an angel, fled
with the boy and his mother to Egypt to the city of Hermopolis
and remained there for seven years until Herod's death.
When the Lord Jesus entered Egypt all of the idols there
fell as Isaiah had predicted. [...] Cassiodorus [...] says
that purportedly in Hermopolis in Thebaid there is a tree
called the persis and which renews many people's health
[...]. When the Virgin Mary was fleeing with her son to
Egypt, this tree bent all the way to the earth and humbly
paid homage to Christ.
Just as theology and the ecclesiastic
history of modern times tried to rid the holy texts of their
later apocryphal additions, painters and sculptors abandoned
their colourful stories, which until then had been an integral
part of the "Flight to Egypt". These stories about the traps,
adversity and dangers that Mary with Jesus and Joseph miraculously
overcame during the journey from Bethlehem to Egypt emphasised
the importance of the events of Christ's infancy in the plan
of salvation. Some of them were given the opportunity to confirm
their appeal here and there, but only as more or less empty
paraphernalia. The evolution of depicting this idea, however,
continued on two differing paths. The first led to the "Flight
to Egypt" conceived as a realistic scene from everyday life.
Thus in Adam Elsheimer's small painting from 1609 (Alte Pinakothek,
Munich), the Holy Family moves through a night landscape where
the moon, illustrated with preciseness worthy of an astronomer,
dominates the star-filled heavens. In Orazio Gentileschi's
monumental canvas from approximately 1625-28 in the Viennese
Kunsthistorisches Museum Mary and Joseph lie resting on the
earth before a cracked wall like two homeless people. A second
path, leading to the idealisation of stories associated with
the Egyptian journey of the Holy Family, was, surprisingly,
most radically taken up by Michelangelo da Caravaggio in approximately
1594-95 with his Rest on the Flight into Egypt, which is designed
as an elegant but fantastical utopia. From here the path then
leads all the way to the painting of Joseph Führich from 1866-67.
A wholly exceptional position on this intersection between
the everyday and utopia is held by a large group of paintings
created by French painter Nicolas Poussin in the second quarter
and beginning of the third quarter of the 17th century. This
"virtual serial" contains depictions of all the stories forming
the history of the Holy Family's flight to Egypt and represents
the complete cycle of the life of the refugee: violence -
flight - life in exile - return to one's homeland. The first
events of this drama are represented in Poussin's work by
the truly monumental, tragic painting Massacre of the Innocents
(Musée Condé, Chantilly). Several depictions of the Flight
itself follow, as well as the Life of the Holy Family in Egypt,
one of which is the painting from 1625-28 in the Hermitage
in St. Petersburg. The final scene of the drama is represented
by the rarely illustrated scene The Return of the Holy Family
from Egypt in a painting in the Dulwich Picture Gallery in
London, where Joseph and Mary with Jesus prepare to board
a boat and start their journey. With these masterful canvases,
the French painter imprinted an unusual fatality and grandeur
onto traditional biblical themes.
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