The Flight into Egypt, from the Life of the Virgin

Early in his career Albrecht Dürer set out to meet Martin Schongauer but arrived after the famous printmaker’s death. This woodcut from The Life of the Virgin, one of Dürer’s three major illustrated books along with The Passion and The Apocalypse, represents an homage to Schongauer. Compared to Schongauer’s print of the scene, Dürer’s image shares an interest in a variety of exotic vegetation (palms) and desert creatures (lizards) and by suggesting the arid nature of the landscape, visually reinforces how far the family had to travel to escape the persecution of Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents.