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Religious art
The Rest in the flight to Egypt
The scene is based not on any incident in the Bible itself, but on a body of tales or legends that had grown up in the early Middle Ages around the Bible story of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt for refuge on being warned that Herod the Great was seeking to kill the Christ Child. According to the legend, Joseph and Mary stopped on the flight in a grove of trees; the Holy Child ordered the trees to bend down so that Joseph could take fruit from them, and then ordered a spring of water to gush forth from the roots so that his parents could quench their thirst. The basic story took on many extra details during the centuries.The ass, a traditional ingredient of the legend and a foretelling of the ass that would one day bear Christ into Jerusalem, watches

In the center there is the Virgin sat on a stone with Child in her lap.Both rest from the difficulties of the way, at the time that St. Joseph represented in the most discreet background, approaches them for the left side with a pitcher of milk.
Another series of curious scenes, taken of apocryphal texts illustrate the composition. A few fantastic architectures and the presence of the feet of a sculpture on a sphere, allude symbolically to the episode known as " The fall of the idols " .Finally, the peasants to the right are a clear modal of the miracle of the " field of wheat ", when Jesus made grow the grains this way confuse the soldiers who they were prosecuting.
Based in:

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt. DAVID, Gerard (Successor).Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten,Antwerp

Gerard David-Successor