The Flight into Egypt

Francesco Francia was a leading Bolognese painter and goldsmith of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century whose Flight into Egypt belongs to his mature production. The Holy Family's flight from Herod's massacre of the Innocents was a subject that combined landscape, religious narrative, and intimate human tenderness. Francia's style, derived partly from Perugino and partly from his goldsmith training, is characterised by refined elegance and warm devotional sincerity.

The Holy Family is shown travelling through a landscape rendered with early cinquecento attention to atmospheric distance. Francia's goldsmith background is evident in the careful detail of the figures' costumes and the refined facial expressions. The compositional arrangement — the three figures in gentle procession — has the ordered clarity typical of the Bolognese quattrocento tradition.