Ruth Leon recommends… Titian’s Rest on the Flight Into Egypt
Ruth Leon recommendsTitian’s Rest on the Flight Into Egypt
Here’s another of those delicious short art history videos that I love so much. Dr James Fox, art historian and broadcaster and Letitzia Treves, who seems to have moved from the National Gallery to the auction house Christies where she is now Global Head of Research and Expertise in Old Master Pictures, discuss Titian’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt.
This painting was coveted by aristocrats, emperors and archdukes, stolen not once but twice, and once left at a bus stop.
Painted when Titian was in his late teens, this masterpiece is first documented in the collection of a Venetian spice merchant in the early 17th century. It has since hung in London, Brussels, Vienna, Paris and Longleat House in Wiltshire — from where it was stolen and later recovered by an art detective.
It has been prized for its vividly coloured scene of familial affection within the natural world. Like its subjects, Rest on the Flight into Egypt has been on a long and eventful journey — a journey that’s far from over.
It’s now for sale this summer at Christie’s, just in case you have a spare £15-25 million in your pocket.
Superb painting….. Titian was a genius. His works look in the way much of Wagner and Debussy sound.
Time to buy lottery tickets.
Their comment that the setting didn’t look very Egyptian is a naive one. There would be many places in Egypt where a verdant setting like that might be found.
If Egypt were all sand, there would not have been civilization there for the last 5000 years.
But I am most curious about the representation of this work in the David Teniers painting. His version is a wider format than the painting has today. Was Titian’s art cropped at some point?