Rest during the Flight (into Egypt)

Rest during the Flight into Egypt, dated 1873 and held by the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, is one of Richter's final religious works — painted when he was seventy-three, in the last years of his life and active career. The Flight into Egypt was among the most beloved subjects of German religious painting from Dürer onward, and Richter had treated it and related Holy Family subjects throughout his career, finding in the tender domesticity of the scene — the young mother, the sheltering father, the infant at rest — a perfect synthesis of his dual interests in sacred narrative and quiet, intimate human warmth. By 1873 Richter was partially blind from a progressive eye condition, making the execution of detailed work increasingly difficult; later works show a broader, less refined handling that reflects this physical constraint rather than a failure of artistic intelligence. The Kupferstichkabinett, primarily a drawings collection, may hold this oil as a rare exception or as part of a broader Richter bequest.

A late-career work by an artist experiencing vision difficulties would show broader brushwork and simplified detail compared to Richter's 1840s paintings, but the compositional archetype — pyramidal Holy Family group in a landscape setting — is sufficiently internalised to execute from long familiarity even with reduced visual acuity.