The Flight into Egypt
Medium
Oil on panel
Dimensions
43.8 × 31.8 cm (17 1/4 × 12 1/2 in.); Framed: 64.8 × 53.4 × 10.2 cm (25 1/2 × 21 × 4 in.)
Classification
oil on panel
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
16497
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The flight into Egypt—a common subject in European art—refers to an episode in the life of Christ when his family fled King Herod, who sought to kill the infant Jesus. Abraham van Diepenbeeck made the theme his own by including an angel and the inquisitive cow at bottom right. This panel was not intended to be a finished painting; it is instead a grisaille (monochrome grey) oil sketch, which was then translated into an engraving. Collaborating with printmakers could be lucrative for painters whi...
About the Artist
Abraham Jansz. van Diepenbeeck · 1596–1675
Abraham Jansz. van Diepenbeeck was baptised on 9 May 1596 in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Habsburg Netherlands, the son of the glass painter Jan Roelofsz. van Diepenbeeck, under whom he studied and trained in the family craft. After his father’s death in 1620 he left for Antwerp, registering in 1622–23 as a glass painter with the Guild of Saint Luke. Although the early biographer Arnold Houbraken claim...