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Rest on the Flight into Egypt
by Guercino
Also known as: Rest on the Flight to Egypt with an angel Playing the Violin
About the Artwork
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (called il Guercino) created Rest on the Flight to Egypt as a tondo, a circular canvas rarely used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries except in the case of holy subjects. The round shape represents the circle, symbolic for the nature of God, believed to have no end and no beginning. The painting depicts Mary the Mother of God, the Infant Christ, St. Joseph, and a musical angel, serenading the Holy Family during their exhausting journey through Egypt. Guercino, "the squint-eyed", was born near Bologna and became an influential painter in Rome in the early seventeenth century, where he created important commissions. His style was an important mix of the strong use of tenebrism, introduced by Caravaggio, and artists of the classical baroque, such as Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, and Guido Reni. The composition is clearly composed with strongly modeled forms and a cool harmony of colors. The sleeping Infant Christ is lulled to sleep by the angel's violin and the ideal landscape with classical ruins adds to the calm serenity of this painting.
Provenance
by 1678: Tiberio Lancellotti (Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome, Italy), by inheritance to his heirs. 1804: Heirs of Tiberio Lancellotti, sold to William Buchanan (London, England) through Mr. Irvine. by 1824–1844: Jeremiah Harman, (sold, Christies’s, London, no. 18, through Lloyd to Henry Vane, Second Duke of Cleveland). 1788–1864: Henry Vane, Second Duke of Cleveland. 1965: Private collection, London (sold, Sotheby’s, London, no. 100, through Julius Weitzner (London, England), to the Cleveland Museum of Art).
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1967. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 29-December 31, 1967). Rembrandt exhibition - Reciprocal Loan. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO (organizer) (October 30, 2011-September 16, 2012).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666)
- Date
- 1624
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 95.9 x 96.6 x 10.8 cm (37 3/4 x 38 1/16 x 4 1/4 in.); Diameter: 68.5 cm (26 15/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Accession no.
- 1967.123
More by Guercino in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009791
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