Flight into Egypt

==In art==
[[File:Moone carvings.jpg|thumb|The Flight into Egypt (top), depicted on [[Moone]] High Cross, [[Ireland]] (10th century)]]
The Flight into Egypt was a popular subject in art, showing Mary with the baby on a donkey, led by Joseph, borrowing the older [[iconography]] of the rare Byzantine ''Journey to Bethlehem''.  Nevertheless, Joseph is sometimes holding the child on his shoulders.<ref>Terrier Aliferis, L., "Joseph christophore dans la Fuite en Egypte", ''Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte'', 2016</ref> Before about 1525, it usually formed part of a larger cycle, whether of [[Nativity of Jesus in art|the Nativity]], or the ''Life of Christ'' or ''Life of the Virgin''.
[[Image:Icon 01012 Begstvo v Egipet. Nachalo XVII v.jpg|thumb|left|[[Russian icons|Russian]] [[icon]] of the Flight into Egypt; the bottom section shows the [[cult image|idol]]s of Egypt miraculously falling down before Jesus and being smashed (17th century).]]

From the [[Early Netherlandish painting|15th century in the Netherlands]] onwards, the non-Biblical subject of the [[Holy Family]] resting on the journey, the ''[[Rest on the Flight into Egypt]]'' became popular, by the late 16th century perhaps more common than the original traveling family.  The family were often accompanied by angels, and in earlier images sometimes an older boy who may represent [[James the Brother of the Lord]], interpreted as a son of Joseph, by a previous marriage.<ref>The subject only emerges in the second half of the fourteenth century. In some Orthodox traditions the older boy is the one who protects Joseph from the "shepherd-tempter" in the main Nativity scene. G Schiller, ''Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. I'',1971 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, p. 124, {{ISBN|0-85331-270-2}}.</ref>

The background to these scenes usually (until the [[Council of Trent]] tightened up on such additions to scripture) included a number of apocryphal [[miracle]]s, and gave an opportunity for the emerging genre of [[landscape painting]]. In the ''Miracle of the corn'', the pursuing soldiers interrogated peasants, asking when the Holy Family passed by. The peasants truthfully said it was when they were sowing their [[wheat]] seed; however the wheat has miraculously grown to full height. In the ''Miracle of the idol'' a pagan statue fell from its plinth as the infant Jesus passed by, and a spring gushed up from the desert (originally separate, these are often combined). In other less commonly seen legends, a group of robbers abandoned their plan to rob the travelers, and a [[date palm]] tree bent down to allow them to pluck the fruit.<ref>Schiller:117–123. The date palm incident is also in the [[Quran]]. There are two different falling statue legends, one related to the arrival of the family at the Egyptian city of Sotina, and the other usually shown in open country. Sometimes both are shown.</ref>

During the 16th century, as interest in [[landscape art|landscape painting]] grew, the subject became popular as an individual subject for paintings, often with the figures small in a large landscape. The subject was especially popular with [[German art|German Romantic painters]], and later in the 19th century was one of a number of New Testament subjects which lent themselves to [[Orientalism|Orientalist]] treatment. Unusually, the 18th century artist [[Gianbattista Tiepolo]] produced a whole series of [[etchings]] with 24 scenes from the flight, most just showing different views of the Holy Family travelling.<ref>Catalogued as Baudi di Vesme nos 1–27 (with three plates of frontispiece etc.)</ref>
[[File:Flight Into Egypt 1923 Henry Ossawa Tanner.jpg|thumb|''Flight Into Egypt'', by [[Henry Ossawa Tanner]], 1923]]
A subject taking place after the arrival in Egypt is the meeting of the infant Jesus with his cousin, the infant [[John the Baptist]], who, according to legend was rescued from [[Bethlehem]] before the massacre by the [[Archangel Uriel]], and joined the Holy Family in Egypt. This meeting of the two Holy Children was to be painted by many artists during the Renaissance period, after being popularized by [[Leonardo da Vinci]] and then [[Raphael]] with works like Leonardo's [[Virgin of the Rocks]].

The "[[Flight into Egypt (Henry O. Tanner painting, 1899)|Flight into Egypt]]" was a favorite theme of [[Henry Ossawa Tanner]], depicting the Holy Family's clandestine evasion of King Herod's assassins (Matthew 2:12–14). In it Tanner expresses his sensitivity to issues of personal freedom, escape from persecution, and migrations of African-Americans from the South to the North.<ref>[http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/16947 ''Flight into Egypt'', Henry Ossawa Tanner, Metropolitan Museum of Art]</ref>

Two plays of the medieval ''[[Ordo Rachelis]]'' cycle contain an account of the flight into Egypt, and the one found in the [[Fleury Playbook]] contains the only dramatic representation of the return from Egypt.