Title
Flight in Egypt
painter
The Villalobos Master (?, ca. 1450 - ?, ?)
Generic classification
PaintingObject
PaintingDate
ca. 1450Century
Mid 15th c.Cultural context / style
GothicMaterial
PanelIconography / Theme
Huida a EgiptoProvenance
Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, United States)Current location
Soumaya Museum, México (Ciudad de México, Mexico)Object history
Acquired in 1992 on the international market (Sotheby's New York, May 22), it was for a time in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Its most probable provenance is one of the altarpieces that disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century in Castilla y León.
Description
On a mule, the Virgin and Child in arms leave Bethlehem. St. Joseph leads the mule, and an angel accompanies them. In the background, the profile of a palm tree is seen, in allusion to the miracle narrated in the apocryphal Gospels by which the Virgin felt hungry, and the Child to please his mother, after making a gesture of blessing, the branches of the palm tree bent so that the Virgin and her son could take from its fruit. The scene follows the patterns for this episode of the International Gothic, and of the Italian primitives where St. Joseph is the one who guides the mule with the Virgin and Child on the rump. This panel is a bit swept and the bottom and lower part has lost some of its qualities.
Post was the first to synthesize the style of this master of the last quarter of the 15th century working in Castile in 1930 (Post, vol. 3, pp. 287-288). He took as a base the main altarpiece of San Félix de Villalobos in Zamora. He notices the strong influence of the painter Nicolás Francés, so he considers that this Master of Villalobos must have been one of his closest followers. Following this tendency of the international Gothic, in the Maestro of Villalobos predominates the golden backgrounds, the stylized figures and the scenes composed following a hierarchical structure where the main figures occupy the foreground, or their size is slightly larger than the rest of the figures.
The origin of this panel of the Flight into Egypt from the Soumaya Museum is unknown. It is assumed to be of Castilian origin, being attributed to the Master of Villalobos when it belonged to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Post, vol. 8, part 2, pp. 684-685). In 1992, it went on the New York art market where it was acquired by the Soumaya Museum.
Locations
Unknown date
Unknown date
auction house
Sotheby's, London (United Kingdom)
present
Bibliography
- GAYA NUÑO, Juan Antonio (1958): La pintura española fuera de España (historia y catálogo), Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, p. 332.
- PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, Alfonso y NAVARRETE PRIETO, Benito (2003): Tesoros del Museo Soumaya de México. Siglos XV-XIX, Museo Soumaya y BBVA, Madrid-Bilbao, pp. 58-59.
- POST, Chandler Rathfon (1941): A History of Spanish Painting, vol. 8 (The Aragonese School in the Late Middle Ages), nº 2, Harvard University Press, Cambdridge (Massachusetts), pp. 684-685.
Citation:
Isabel Escalera Fernández and Ana Diéguez Rodríguez, "Flight in Egypt" in Nostra et Mundi. Cultural Heritage from Castile and Leon around the world, Fundación Castilla y León, 2025. https://inventario.nostraetmundi.com/en/work/128
Flight in Egypt
Source: PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, Alfonso Emilio, NAVARRETE PRIETO, Benito y CURIEL, Gustavo: Tesoros del Museo Soumaya de México siglos XV-XIX (Madrid: Fundación BBVA, 2004), 59.
Source: PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, Alfonso Emilio, NAVARRETE PRIETO, Benito y CURIEL, Gustavo: Tesoros del Museo Soumaya de México siglos XV-XIX (Madrid: Fundación BBVA, 2004), 59.
