Sawston Village History Society
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The speaker at the December meeting was Paul Shakeshaft who guided his audience through a range of interpretations by painters of the Flight into Egypt (Matthew 2 vv13-15).
The earliest representations were carvings from Ireland and France and frescoes from Switzerland and Palermo. These had the stable features of the Holy Family, travelling from left to right. One included James, the son of Joseph by a former marriage and another had the child on Joseph’s shoulder.
In the Italian Renaissance Giotto, Gentile da Fabriano, Titian and Bassano all painted the scene. The latter included two thieves who in legend became the thieves between whom Christ was later crucified. The subject was popular in the Low Countries. One altarpiece shows an idol falling to the ground as the Holy Family pass and uses vivid colours with vermilion, ultramarine and ochre. In these depictions the Family travel right to left and Bruegel the Elder shows them by an estuary with the Virgin, unusually, in vermilion, while Bruegel the Younger puts them in his own world and shows them passing through a village unnoticed.
In the seventeenth century the Flight was a very popular subject for painters. In one the Virgin leads the way as the donkey is very tired. Claude puts them in the background of an idyllic pastoral landscape and Cuyp has a very serene approach and the donkey is loaded with panniers, while the Virgin wears a variety of colours.
The eighteenth century saw a decline in the topic for painters, but there was a revival about 1870 with painters who had visited the Near East and Egypt using backgrounds to show the contrast between the pagan gods like Horus and Isis and Christian love. One showed the Family arriving at the Pyramids with heathen worshippers and a very weary donkey, while another shows the Sphinx, where the Virgin and Child are resting and Joseph is exhausted.
The members then enjoyed festive drinks and refreshments and a well-supplied raffle.
Mary Dicken