Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Bernardino Passeri was a painter, engraver, and printer who worked in Rome in the last decades of the 16th century. This monumental engraving probably belonged to a larger series of related religious subjects of the same year. In this composition, the exaggerated movement of the trees and landscape is complicated by Joseph’s placement, leaning out into the viewer’s space—a typical Baroque device. Although many of Passeri’s designs were reproduced by other engravers, the inscription on this example indicates it is from his own hand.