A Sagrada Família em Repouso no Egito (The Holy Family at Rest in Egypt) - Jan van Huysum

 

A Sagrada Família em Repouso no Egito (The Holy Family at Rest in Egypt) - Jan van Huysum
Egito
Coleção privada
OST - 53x73 - 1727


In the very specialized world of early eighteenth century Dutch art, Jan van Huysum was rather unusual in working in two very different genres: still life and landscape. His landscapes are perhaps less well known than his famous flower paintings, but nonetheless make up a significant part of his oeuvre. Van Huysum's landscapes include both oil paintings and elaborate finished watercolors, always composed in a rather Claudian manner and often, as here, incorporating a biblical or classical subject.
Representations of the Holy Family at rest already in Egypt are rare, and the present subject is an interesting variation on the more commonly portrayed episode on Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Van Huysum's prominent placement of the female Sphinx, the pyramid, and the Obelisk decorated with figures of a sistrum-toting Isis and other Egyptian deities betray the artist's precocious interest in Egyptian antiquity, as well as firmly denoting the locale portrayed in the picture.
The pendant to this painting, Arcadian Landscape with a Herm of Priapus, is in the Amsterdam Museum. The two paintings remained together until their auction as separate lots in 1817. A finished drawing of the composition, in brush and gray and brown ink, is at the Teylers Museum, Amsterdam.