Date
The date of the painting is disputed. According to Caravaggio's contemporary Giulio Mancini, this painting and the Penitent Magdalene, together with an unidentified painting of Saint John the Evangelist, was done while Caravaggio was staying with Monsignor Fantino Petrignani, shortly after leaving the workshop of Giuseppe Cesari. This probably happened in January 1594.
However, there are problems with accepting Mancini's statement. To begin, none of these three works were listed in Petragnani's inventory of 1600, although it is possible that they could have been painted for another patron. More seriously, the painting has an obvious and direct compositional source in Annibale Carracci's Judgement of Hercules, which was completed early in 1596 and widely admired: the pose of Caravaggio's angel, for example, is closely based on that of Carracci's figure of Vice.
While John Gash (2003) accepts Mancini's testimony, others, including Peter Robb and Helen Langdon (both 1998), have raised the possibility that it was painted for Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, who made Caravaggio in effect his household artist from about 1595 or 1596. The sophisticated treatment is appropriate for the cardinal's intellectual tastes and interests (the music held by Joseph is a motet by the Flemish composer Noel Bauldeweyn, with a text from the Song of Songs dedicated to the Madonna, Quam pulchra es, "How beautiful you are"), and it is unlikely that the artist would embark on a work like this other than as a direct commission.
Read more about this topic: Rest On The Flight Into Egypt (Caravaggio)
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