The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

religious

This monumental composition, executed for the Camaldolite hermitage in Frascati, includes a number of details that not only enliven the subject, but also transform it into an almost intimate narrative. The landscape setting is remarkable in itself and appears to have been based on the work of Adam Elsheimer. Saraceni did take some inspiration from Caravaggio's Rest on the Flight into Egypt in which music also comforts the Holy Family on their difficult journey.

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About the Artist

Carlo Saraceni

1579 – 1620

Saraceni spent almost all his career in Rome, where he formed his style under the influence of Caravaggio and Elsheimer, painting small luminous pictures of figures in landscapes as well as much larger altarpieces, including the replacement of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin (Louvre, Paris), which the church of Sta Maria della Scala had rejected in 1606. Saraceni's picture is still "in situ". He painted several other smaller variants or versions of the picture, so the design was evidently popular. His style was sensitive and poetic, showing a delicate feeling for colour and tone. His liking for turbans, tasselled fringes, and stringy drapery folds, and his richly impasted paint may have influenced Dutch artists in Rome such as Lastman and Pynas, and through them Rembrandt.

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