The Flight into Egypt: A night Piece (VI/X)

This etching depicts Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus travelling to Egypt to escape King Herod's massacre of the infants.

According to the 2013 catalogue raisonné of Rembrandt's etchings, ten states of this print are in existence but only I-VI are entirely Rembrandt's work. Our version is the sixth state. For the first state of the print, Joseph and Mary are left almost entirely white, only partially shaded with parallel hatching. Light from Joseph's lantern brings the protagonists into sharp relief and illuminates the path before them. Rembrandt gradually altered his plate, adding shading in etching and drypoint. For this state he also added cross-hatching to the nose of the donkey, Joseph's hand and his sleeve, and extra shading to the lower part of the lantern. Rembrandt's alterations all but obliterated the landscape and the scene and this version is almost entirely black. Mary, Joseph and the donkey are now barely visible, their figures just hinted at by the much more subdued light emitted by Joseph's lantern.