Manner of Laurent de la Hyre, mid-late 18th century- The flight into Egypt; oil on panel, bears two old labels attached to the reverse, 38.5 x 48.2 cm. Provenance: With Gérard Vigneron, Paris.; Private Collection, UK. Note: The iconography of...

Manner of Laurent de la Hyre, mid-late 18th century- The flight into Egypt; oil on panel, bears two old labels attached to the reverse, 38.5 x 48.2 cm. Provenance: With Gérard Vigneron, Paris.; Private Collection, UK. Note: The iconography of this ‘flight’, particularly with the palm tree and the water that is somewhat miraculously present in the foreground, is apparently taken specifically from the ‘Pseudo-Matthew’ Apocrypha: ‘Then the child Jesus, with a joyful countenance, reposing in the bosom of His mother, said to the palm: 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, it remained bent down, waiting the order to rise from Him who had commanded it to stoop. Then Jesus said to it: Raise thyself, O palm tree, and be strong, and be the companion of my trees, which are in the paradise of my Father; 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 root there began to come forth a spring of water exceedingly clear and cool and sparkling. 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.’ Whilst a firm attribution for the present work has not yet been attained, the composition and handling equally point to a Northern European-influenced French painter, unlike de la Hyre, whose works were largely Italian-inspired. This is partly because the Flemish and Dutch were particularly interested in multi-figured and crowded ‘flight’ paintings rather than solely featuring Mary, Joseph and Jesus, but is also suggestive in the painting’s attention to ‘geographical’ and ‘historical’ detail – the camel at the left, for instance, and the starkly delineated but rather accurate pyramid without ‘cone’. For an in-depth study of paintings after the Apocrypha, see D.R. Cartlidge and J. Keith Elliott, ‘Art and the Christian Apocrypha’, New York, 2001.
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