The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

c. 1530

Maerten van Heemskerck

Painter, Netherlandish, 1498 - 1574

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman sits in front of a vast landscape and holds a nude baby boy on her lap in this horizontal painting. The woman, Mary, sits with her knees angled to our left, but she looks at us from the corners of brown eyes. She has a delicate nose, smooth cheeks, a pointed chin, and her pink lips are closed. A few strands of blond hair escape from braids that overlap across the top of her head. She wears a rose-red dress over a translucent white undergarment, which is visible along the neckline and on the forearms. A cloth striped with azure and powder blue, pale pink, lemon yellow, and teal drapes across her seated thighs and wraps back around her hips. One hand rests in her lap near one of the baby’s feet, and the other braces the child’s other hip. The baby, Jesus, has tightly curled blond hair and a flushed face. His body resembles a somewhat muscular adult. Jesus rests his shoulders back against the woman’s chest and turns to look up at her. One hand touches one of her breasts and the other holds a butterfly by its parchment-yellow wings. The foot not by the woman’s hand rests on a gold dagger near the woman’s far hip. A gnarled tree with dark green leaves winds from a rocky crag to our left. The pair are lit from our left, and Mary casts a shadow on the large, flat boulder on which she sits. The land dips steeply down beyond the boulder. A man wearing a pale pink garment that flaps in the wind stands on a rocky outcropping near a grazing animal. Tiny in scale, three more people walk or run in the distance to our right. Stone structures are tucked in among tree-dotted hills that roll gently back to a hazy blue, mountainous horizon, which comes about five-sixths of the way up this composition. The sky above is a similar icy blue.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 41-A

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 57.7 × 74.7 cm (22 11/16 × 29 7/16 in.)
    framed: 78.11 × 94.93 × 6.35 cm (30 3/4 × 37 3/8 × 2 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.36

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Heinrich Wilhelm Campe, Leipzig [1770-1862]; his grandson, Heinrich Vieweg, Braunschweig [1826-1890];[1] his heirs; (their sale, Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, 18 March 1930, no. 49, as by Jan van Scorel); Mary Harriet (May) Robertson Howard [1878-1933] and Dr. Anton (Tonio) [1873-1941] von Riedemann, Meggen, Switzerland[2]; their heirs, Switzerland. (Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, possibly by 1945 and at least by 1947).[3] (Frederick Mont, New York); purchased 30 January 1952 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1961 to NGA.
[1] Ludwig Scheibler and Wilhelm von Bode, "Verzeichniss der Gemälde des Jan van Scorel," Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 2 (1881), 212, record the painting as being in the Vieweg collection; for Heinrich Campe see Friedrich Winkler, "Die Sammlung Vieweg," Pantheon 5 (1930), 78, repro. 73.
[2] Annotations in two catalogues of the 1930 Vieweg collection sale in the RKD Library name the buyer of the painting as Frau T. v. Riedemann of St. Charles Hall, Meggen. Dr. Suzanne Laemers of the RKD kindly provided scans of the catalogues (see email of 25 April 2024 in NGA curatorial file). After Tonio von Riedemann’s death in 1941, his heirs left his villa unoccupied until selling it in 1947, according to Helmut W. Rodenhausen, St. Charles Hall Meggen: Begegnungen, Kultur, Konzerte, Meggen, 2012: 70.
[3] The painting was in the 1945 exhibition Meisterwerke holländischer Malerei at the Kunstmuseum Basel (no. 87), and an annotation in a copy of the catalogue in the RKD Library, written at an unknown date by Hans Schneider, the RKD’s first director and curator of the exhibition, identifies the owner as the Galerie Fischer. A photograph of the painting held in the Max J. Friedländer archive at the RKD is annotated on the verso by Friedländer with “Fischer Luz[ern]. 1947.” This information and scans of the catalogue and photograph were kindly provided by Dr. Laemers (see emails of 23 April 2024 and 7 May 2024 in NGA curatorial file).
[4] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2283.
.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1945

  • Meisterwerke holländischer Malerei des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung (Kunstmuseum), Basel, 1945, no. 78, as Madonna and Child by Jan van Scorel.

1955

  • Jan van Scorel, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1955, no. 25, as Madonna and Child by Jan van Scorel.

1986

  • Art Before the Iconoclasm, North Netherlandish Art 1525-1580, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1986, no. 69, repro.

1993

  • Maerten van Heemskerck's "Panoramic Fantasy of the Ancient World", The Walter's Art Gallery, Baltimore, no cat.

Bibliography

1881

  • Scheibler, Ludwig, and Wilhelm Bode. "Verzeichniss der Gemälde des Jan Van Schorel." Jahrbuch der königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen (Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen) 2 (1881): 212.

1923

  • Hoogewerff, G. J. Jan van Scorel. Peintre de la renaissance hollandaise. The Hague, 1923: 141, no. 20.

1924

  • Friedländer, Max J. Die altniederländische Malerei 14 vols. Berlin and Leiden, 1924-1937. Leiden, 1935: 12:202, no. 327. (English ed., 14 vols., Leiden, 1967-1976. Leiden, 1975: 123, no. 327, pl. 178.)

1930

  • Deusch, Werner R. "Die Sammlung Vieweg-Braunschweig." Die Kunstauktion [Die Weltkunst] 4 (23 February, 1930): 1-2, repro.

  • Winkler, Friedrich. "Die Sammlung Vieweg." Pantheon 5 (1930) 78, repro. 73.

1936

  • Hoogewerff, G. J. De Noord-Nederlandsche Schilderkunst. 5 vols. The Hague, 1941/1942: 4:303, 305, fig. 143.

1938

  • Wescher, Paul. "Heemskerck und Scorel." Jahrbuch der königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen (Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen) 59 (1938): 221-223, fig. 2.

1954

  • Bruyn, Josua. "Enige werken van Jan van Scorel uit zijn Haarlemse tijd (1527-1529)." Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 2 (1954): 54.

1955

  • Levie, Simon H. "De copie van een Bewening." Oud Holland 70 (1955): 248.

1956

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 164, no. 64, repro., as by Jan van Scorel.

1957

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): 10, fig. 5, pl. 137, as by Jan van Scorel.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 320, repro., as by Jan van Scorel.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 306, repro., as by Jan van Scorel.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 121, as by Jan van Scorel.

1968

  • Cuttler, Charles D. Northern Painting, from Pucelle to Bruegel: Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries. New York, 1968: 452, fig. 620.

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 108, repro., as by Jan van Scorel.

  • Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 131, color repro. (attributed to Jan Van Scorel)

1969

  • Osten, Gert von der, and Horst Vey. Painting and Sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands 1500 to 1600. Baltimore, 1969: 183, pl. 163.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 322, repro., as by Jan van Scorel.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 86-88, fig. 85, as by Jan van Scorel.

1980

  • Grosshans, Rainald. Maerten van Heemskerck: Die Gemälde. Berlin, 1980: 47-48, 96-97, no. 8, pl. 8.

1982

  • Faries, Molly. "Two Additional Panels from Jan van Scorel's Workshop: Comments about Authorship." Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture. Colloque IV; 29-30-31 Octobre 1981. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982: 124-125, 129.

1983

  • Reznicek, E.K.J. Review of Maerten van Heemskerck. Die Gemälde by Rainald Grosshans. In Oud Holland 97 (1983): 42, 45, fig. 1, detail.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. Washington, 1984: 168, no. 189, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 199, repro.

  • Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350-1575. New York, 1985: 475, fig. 546.

1986

  • Hand, John Oliver and Martha Wolff. Early Netherlandish Painting. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1986: 111-117, color repro. 113.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 128-129, no. 98, color repro.

2005

  • Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575. Rev. ed. by Larry Silver and Henry Luttikhuizen. Upper Saddle River, 2005: 491-492, col. fig. 21.10.

2011

  • Helmus, Liesbeth M. Catalogue of Paintings, 1363-1600, Centraal Museum Utrecht. Utrecht, 2011: 217, under no. 24, color fig. 8.

Wikidata ID

Q20176026

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