La Sainte Famille au Repos (The Holy Family at Rest)
19th century
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Mount: 8 1/2 × 13 3/4 in. (21.6 × 34.9 cm) Sheet: 1 3/4 × 3 1/8 in. (4.5 × 8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The J. B. Neumann Collection, Gift of Dr. Franz H. Hirschland, 1951
Accession Number
51.504.60
Tags
Art Historical Context
Rodolphe Bresdin'sLa Sainte Famille auos* (The Holy Family at Rest), delicate 19th-century etching captures an intimate moment of the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus, likely with Saint Joseph nearby, during their flight into Egypt. This tender religious scene evokes quiet repose and divine protection, resonating with the devotional art traditions of the era. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum Art's Drawings and Prints, it entered the collection in 1951 as part of The J. B. Neumann Collection, by Dr. Franz H. Hirschland. Bresdin, a French artist admired for his visionary precision, master...
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...