An allegory of the rest on the flight into egypt
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
sheet: 8 1/4 x 9 7/8 in. (21 x 25.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.501.4251
Art Historical Context
This etching, created between 1650 and 1655, captures an allegorical interpretation of the biblical “Rest on the Flight into Egypt.” In the scene, the Holy Family pauses during their journey, surrounded by symbolic figures that extend the narrative beyond the Gospel account. Pietro Testa, the principal artist, was renowned for infusing religious subjects with philosophical depth, and the involvement of Giovanni Cesare Testa and publisher Giovanni Giacomo De Rossi reflects the collaborative printmaking practices of Baroque Rome. Executed in etching, a medium prized for its fine linear detail a...
About the Artist
Pietro Testa|Giovanni Cesare Testa|Giovanni Giacomo De Rossi · 1612–1650
Pietro Testa was born in Lucca in 1612 and, in accordance with the conventions of Italian artistic training, made his way to Rome while still young. There he studied under two of the leading painters of the early seventeenth century: Domenichino, from whom he absorbed a taste for classical restraint and narrative clarity, and Pietro da Cortona, whose more exuberant Baroque manner offered a contras...