The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Saint John the Baptist

The Holy Family rests on their flight into Egypt beneath a date palm and a pomegranate tree, while the Infant Saint John the Baptist kneels before the Christ Child, seated on the Madonna’s lap, and presents him with a reed cross. Saint Joseph leans on the donkey’s pack saddle and calmly watches the meeting; a half-eaten pomegranate lies in the foreground, a symbol of the Resurrection, and the palm to the left foreshadows the fronds that would pave Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. In the distance the family flees Bethlehem again on the donkey, escaping Herod’s massacre, beside a ruined arch that alludes to the fall of the pagan order. Fra Bartolommeo painted the scene in 1509, fresh from his return to Florence from Venice, composing the Madonna and the two children in a great triangle of calm grandeur — her graceful pose and softly modelled face capture the Florentine ideal of beauty — and setting them in one of the first genuinely poetic landscapes in religious painting. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.