Workshop of Simone Cantarini (Pesaro, April 1612 – Verona, 1648), Flight into Egypt

Workshop of Simone Cantarini (Pesaro, April 1612 – Verona, 1648)

Escape to Egypt

Oil on panel, 22.5 x 17 cm

With frame, 24 x 30 cm

The painting in question, which depicts the sacred theme of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, fits into the artistic context of seventeenth-century Bologna, particularly that of an artist linked to Simone Cantarini (Il Pesarese, 1612–1648), one of the most important figures of Emilian classicism and a pupil of Guido Reni. The work captures the apocryphal episode of the Holy Family's rest during the journey to Egypt, a subject that emphasizes Christ's humanity and Marian compassion, particularly popular in Counter-Reformation devotional painting. At the center of the composition, the Virgin Mary is presented in a pose of composed grace, supporting the Child Jesus, who with outstretched arms turns either to the viewer or to Saint Joseph. The latter, positioned on the right in the background, in a pose of repose and watchful expectation, completes the sacred narrative. The setting is a rural landscape, with a forest framing the figures and opening onto a luminous hilly horizon, creating an atmospheric depth typical of classicism. Simone Cantarini, known as Il Pesarese (Pesaro, 1612 – Verona, 1648), was a central figure of Emilian Baroque classicism, distinguishing himself as a brilliant painter and master engraver. After an initial training in the Marche, his career was shaped by a crucial stay in Bologna (1630–1637) as a student of Guido Reni. Despite the conflicts caused by his fierce nature, Cantarini absorbed the master's ideal grace, reinterpreting it in a more intimate style and with a greater tonal and chromatic sensitivity, also the fruit of a subsequent stay in Rome where he studied Raphael and the ancient world. After Reni's death in 1642, he opened his own successful studio in Bologna. His career, tragically cut short by his premature death in Verona in 1648, left a significant and influential body of work. Among his best-known masterpieces are the monumental Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Brera Gallery, Milan), the refined Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (Borghese Gallery, Rome), and devotional works such as Saint Jerome Reading (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna), along with a remarkable production of high-quality etchings that spread his artistic language throughout Europe. Cantarini created several versions of the theme of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, both pictorial and engraved, the present one in particular recalling the composition now held at the Louvre.

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