The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

The Virgin Mary supports her son’s head with one hand and his chubby leg with the other, laying him down on her deep blue cloak. The child’s raised leg lifted to one side shows his genitals, proving this is a human child – the son of man and the son of God, as had been promised in the scriptures. Christ sleeps, but holds tiny white flowers on his chest as a sign of his purity. His small body is so smooth and pale that he’s almost like a marble sculpture – just a little pink on his cheeks and his fair curls bring him to life.Mary gazes down at him. She is dressed in the simple, low-necked garment of a peasant woman of the early eighteenth century. Van Der Werff has pushed her back into the shadows, and what little light there is emanates from the infant Christ – he is to become the ‘light of the world’ (John 8: 12). Even more in the background is the figure of Mary’s husband, Joseph, just discernible as he sleeps behind Mary’s arm against the almost uniformly shadowed background. Just a glimpse of a tree and a distant hill against a small patch of evening sky high up on the right soften the bleakness.After Christ’s birth, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, warning him that King Herod was searching for the child in order to kill him. Joseph took Mary and the infant to Egypt for safety, a story told in the New Testament and in biblical apocrypha. While the holy family’s rest on their journey is not actually described anywhere, it has been depicted frequently throughout the ages.Van der Werff was for some time court painter to the Elector Palatine, Johann Wilhelm. It appears that the Elector commissioned the painting shortly after he had made the artist a knight for his services in adding to the decoration of the Elector’s palace in Düsseldorf.