The Flight into Egypt

Prints and Drawings

c. 1540

Domenico Campagnola
Italian, 1500–1564

This sheet illustrates the Holy Family fleeing from King Herod into Egypt, a biblical story from the Gospel of Matthew. Like most of Campagnola’s drawings, the story provides little more than a cover for his primary interest: landscape. While the palm tree left of center signals the story’s North African location, the dense woods and distant mountains
recall the artist’s native Italian countryside.

Campagnola played an important role in establishing landscape as a subject in European art and in the rise of drawings as collectible objects in and of themselves.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Domenico Campagnola
Title: The Flight into Egypt
Origin: Italy
Date: 1540
Medium: Pen and brown ink on dark cream laid paper, laid down on laid paper, with pen and ink and gold ruled lines
Inscriptions: Signed, lower right, brown ink: “Campagnola”
Dimensions: 187 × 250 mm (primary support); 241 × 302 mm (secondary support)
Credit Line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
Reference Number: 2019.874
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/248304/manifest.json

Paris, Boquet et Marty de Cambiaire Fine Art, Oeuvres sur papier du XVIe au XXe Siècle, 2013, pp. 6–7 (ill.), 97, cat. 1 (ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection”, January 25 - May 10, 2020, p. 23, cat. 3, p. 130, GC 5.

Peter Lely (1618–1680), London [stamp (L.2092), recto, lower right, in black]. Jonathan Richardson Sr. (1667–1745), London [signature mount]. Boquet et Marty de Cambiaire Fine Art, Paris, by 2013; sold through François Borne to the Gray Collection Trust, Chicago, Apr. 5, 2016; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019.

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