Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Author: Sarah Vowles

This brisk, rather loose drawing records the finished composition of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (fig.), a painting now in Sarasota.^[1] The iconography is based on the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, in which the Holy Family stop during their journey at an oasis in the desert. Lacking other refreshment, the Christ Child produces fruit from a palm tree and a fount of refreshing water from its roots. Linear in quality, the drawing shows no sign of exploration or rethinking, and is clearly a copy after the finished painting rather than any form of preparatory study. Such copies were made just before the picture was delivered to the patron, so that the composition could be filed away in the workshop archives for future reference.

The Sarasota painting has a mixed attributional history: some scholars have believed it to be a work by Veronese’s son Carlo Caliari (1570-1596), but the majority of the literature supports its status as an autograph work by Veronese himself. The Rotterdam drawing, similarly, has had various names proposed. Much of the literature, including Cocke and Pignatti, attributes it to Benedetto Caliari (1538-1598).^[2] For Rearick, however, the drawing failed to match the rigour of Benedetto’s other pen drawings; he suggested that, instead, it might plausibly be the work of a younger assistant, and proposed the name of Alvise dal Friso (Luigi Benfatto, 1559-1611).^[3] Reviving the attribution to Benedetto in 2014, Carlo Corsato compared the drawing to Christ Healing the Sick, in a private collection in Paris, which has similarly loose, open penwork and comparable pinched, abbreviated facial features.^[4] However, his attribution was cautious and, while Gritt agreed with the potential authorship of Benedetto, Eclercy argued that the Rotterdam drawing is more plausible as a workshop piece, considering it ‘rather wooden’.^[5] The present author agrees with a broader attribution to the studio, as drawings of this type are profoundly difficult to attribute with any confidence. Stylistic arguments do not offer a convincing argument for Benedetto himself and the routine task of recording a composition may well have been delegated to a more junior member of the team.

The drawing is, however, certainly from Veronese’s immediate circle, because the verso bears a list of accounts in his own handwriting, dating from 4 June 1570 to 26 October 1572. Corsato observed that the reference to ‘Magnadola’ in this list suggests a link to the work being carried out at the Villa Giunti at Magnadola di Cessalto.^[6] As the workshop frequently reused old scraps of letters and other documents which were no longer relevant, this suggests that the drawing (and thus the Sarasota painting) postdates October 1572.