Flight into Egypt

Painted with almost photographic precision, this fantastic landscape is crammed with symbolic references to Christ’s divinity. The broken bronze statue alludes to the legend in which Christ, upon entering Egypt, caused pagan idols to collapse to the ground. A conspicuously placed tree foreshadows Christ’s Crucifixion and suggests how the dead wood of the Cross would be transformed into the tree of eternal life through his sacrifice. Even the beautiful pool in the right foreground recalls the cleansing waters of baptism.