The Flight into Egypt (triptych, right wing)

Jan van Dornicke, also known as Jan of Doornik, was an Antwerp painter active in the early sixteenth century who collaborated with Pieter Coecke van Aelst and worked in the milieu of the so-called Antwerp Mannerists. The right wing of this Flight into Egypt triptych depicts the holy family's journey to Egypt following the Massacre of the Innocents — a scene that gave Flemish painters the opportunity to set sacred narrative within developed landscape. Van Dornicke's place in the Antwerp export trade meant his altarpieces were designed for wide distribution across Catholic Europe, balancing devotional clarity with visual spectacle.

The triptych wing employs the standard Flemish oil technique with careful underdrawing. The landscape behind the figures opens into atmospheric distance, with trees rendered leaf by leaf in the Flemish descriptive manner. Figure types follow the Antwerp Mannerist convention of elongated forms in elaborate drapery, modelled with controlled chiaroscuro.