Tobias Verhaecht - Untitled

The subject of the work is not easily recognizable. However, the presence of the Madonna and Child and another figure who could be identified as Saint Joseph, placed in a rugged and wild setting, might suggest the traditional iconography of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt." The episode of the "Flight into Egypt" is recounted in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt to save the baby Jesus from the massacre of the innocents ordered by Herod. The theme of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" is widespread in Western art, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries. The scene is often enriched by the presence of figures of saints.

The work features a very narrow layout, with most of the space occupied by the rugged landscape and the main figures relegated to the right side of the canvas. So much so that one might think the work is a fragment of a larger painting. This is even more true given that this work is attributed to Tobias Verhaecht, whose compositions are characterized by wide, lenticular, bird's-eye perspectives. However, the idea behind the work is perfectly in line with the Antwerp painter's aesthetic: setting the religious episode in a wild, natural setting, the protagonist of the composition, distinguished precisely by the bizarre nature of its geological formations. Tobias Verhaecht's eccentricity reflects the character of certain Flemish paintings of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, which made fantastical and grotesque invention one of its key elements, and which saw artists such as Bosch and Bruegel the Elder as its leading figures. Tobias Verhaecht's imaginative genius poured forth into his landscape invention, as we can see in this work. The rock formations are depicted with a harsh, typically Flemish plasticity and a bold design of broken lines.

The work has been attributed to Tobias Verhaecht, a painter originally from Antwerp, born in 1561 and died in 1631. He always worked in his hometown, except for a period of training in Italy, the results of which are visible in the perfect landscape perspective that characterizes his works. In Antwerp, he had among his pupils a still young Rubens.

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