The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Gerard David

National Gallery of Art

Against a deep, hilly landscape, a young woman sits facing us on a rocky ledge with a small child in her lap in this square painting. The woman and child, Mary and Jesus, both have pale skin and blond hair. Mary wears a cobalt-blue gown over a coral-pink undergarment that peeks out from under the bottom hem and at her cuffs. A paler blue mantle is draped over the back of her head and falls to cover her shoulders and body. A sheer white veil covers her hair and forehead. Jesus wears a sheer white, loose, long-sleeved tunic. Both gaze downward to the bunch of green grapes Mary holds delicately in her left hand, to our right. Jesus reaches forward with both hands to pluck some fruit as Mary supports his body with her other hand. An oval shaped, woven basket with a lid sits on the ground next to Mary’s feet. The gray, rocky outcropping on which they sit is blanketed with straw-colored moss or other growth. A small clearing behind the pair is framed by trees on either side. The trees have tall, slender trunks speckled with light gray patches and canopies of olive and celery-green leaves. To our left and beyond the outcropping, a gray donkey stands behind a tree, nibbling on some grasses at the edge of the outcropping. To our right, in the middle distance, a pale-skinned, bearded man stands and arches back with a long stick raised overhead, as if about to strike the tree in front of him. Beyond him and about two-thirds of the way up the panel, a row of dark green shrubbery separates the clearing from rolling blue hills in the distance.