Flight to Egypt
Medium
Pen and black ink on card with embossed border
Dimensions
3 9/16 x 5 3/8 in. (9 x 13.7 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Emma Avery Welcher and Amy Ogden Welcher, 1965
Accession Number
65.639.3
Tags
Art Historical Context
Rodolphe Bresdin’s “Flight to Egypt” is a small yet richly detailed pen-and-black-ink drawing on card, measuring just 3 9/16 by 5 3/8 inches. Created on an unknown date, the work belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Drawings and Prints and entered the collection as a 1965 gift. Its intimate scale and embossed border encourage viewers to linger over the fine, precise lines that populate the scene with men, women, boys, skeletons, and trees. Although the title recalls the biblical flight of the Holy Family, Bresdin’s inclusion of skeletal figures introduces a striking, almo...
About the Artist
Rodolphe Bresdin · 1822–1885
Rodolphe Bresdin (1822–1885) was a visionary French draughtsman, engraver, and lithographer whose fantastical imagery captured the empathy of rural poverty and the wild exuberance of the imagination. Born on August 12, 1822, in Montrelais near Le Fresne-sur-Loire in Brittany, he grew up in the Breton countryside amid its bardic folklore traditions before a family dispute left him homeless in Paris...