The Flight into Egypt
Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
c. 1503–5
Medium
woodcut
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Dudley P. Allen Fund
Accession Number
1959.99.14
Tags
male
About this artwork
Although Dürer’s woodcut depicts a later event in the biblical narrative, the composition is similar to the scene from the Mirror of Holiness, "Mary and Joseph Travel to Bethlehem" CMA 2005.145.24.b—even to the inclusion of an ox. Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus fled Jerusalem for Egypt after Joseph was warned in a dream that Jesus’s life was in danger. The dense, dark forest through which the Holy Family travels seems to close threateningly around them. While the Indian artist envisioned a “...