Pier Francesco Mola, 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt', about 1630-5

The holy family are resting from their travels in this small pastoral scene. The Virgin Mary sits on a rock, absorbed in nursing the Christ Child; a bundle and pitcher lie on the ground beside her. Saint Joseph leans on the rocky ground beyond, looking up at a small cloud above the Virgin’s head, out of which peer three cherubs. His staff rests against the rock and their donkey grazes in the background on the left.

This is The Flight into Egypt. After the birth of Christ at Bethlehem, King Herod ordered all the male first-born children in the area to be executed – the so-called Massacre of the Innocents. According to the Gospel of Matthew (2: 13–15), an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream warning him that Herod was intent on killing Jesus and that the family should flee to safety in Egypt. Here, however, there is no sign of pursuing soldiers: the scene has the domestic charm of a day out in the countryside.

This is a comparatively early work by Pier Francesco Mola, who specialised in small idyllic landscapes with religious subjects. He made a number of variants of this scene over the course of his career, including an oil on copper in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a later rendition in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

Mola spent most of his life in Rome, aside from two periods during his youth. Although his travels are not well documented, it is known that in 1633–40 and 1641–7 he lived in the north of Italy and visited a number of cities including Bologna and Venice. There, he became familiar with the works of Titian, Guercino and Domenichino. He completed his studies in Bologna in the studio of Francesco Albani, whose influence is evident in this painting, particularly in the figures.