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©
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan at Museu Nacional d´Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Giovanni Francesco Romanelli

Return from the Flight into Egypt

ca. 1635 - 1640
Oil on canvas.
161 x 189.9 cm
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan at Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Inv. no. (
CTB.1995.4
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
This painting is altogether typical of the elegant classicising compositions of the Viterbese Romanelli, a painter whose style hardly undergoes any noticeable evolution. Despite this, the execution of the painting can still be dated on stylistic grounds to the 1630s, not long after Romanelli had trained with Pietro da Cortona. This dating would be justified through a comparison with a work by Cortona, the Rape of Helen, with which the Thyssen picture shares the slight, delicately drawn facial lines of the protagonists and the instantaneous quality of the brushwork which produces, in the Roman picture, the probably intentional impression that the painting is unfinished.

Although any attempt to determine the dates of this painting on stylistic grounds is redundant it corresponds, albeit now in an altered state, to a commission of 1635 of Cardinal Francesco Barberini for the gallery of his residence in the Palazzo della Cancelleria. The canvas is recorded several times in the Barberini archives, which reveal that the work was vertical in format with an arched top, rather than horizontal as it is today. The missing portion contained God the father and the Holy Spirit on clouds: "Adi 20 Maggio 1635/ Fatto fare al Sig.re Gio. Francesco pittore Romanelli Un quatro fatto p di sopra a menzo torno alto palmi nove largo palmi setti menzo con la Madonna che tiene p la mano Jesuchristo ch vanno à  piedi in viaggio con Gioseppe et Angelo che mena p la corda l'Asinello e paesi et arboli, et per disopra un Dio padre con nuvole et l'ospirito Santo sotte De quale no fo fatto copia da Sig.re Mariano Vecchio et ritoccato dal detto Sig.re Gio. Francesco et fo donato alle Moniche [...]" (Biblioteca Vaticana, Archivio Barberini, Libro di Ricordi della Guardaroba, segnato C, 1633-1635, c. 55r.)

Later, the canvas re-appears in the 1649 and 1679 inventories of the collections of Francesco Barberini, on the first occasion with its correct authorship, and in the second case, surprisingly, without the artist's name mentioned. After this date its was inherited by the Prince Maffeo Barberini, after whose death it appears inventoried at his residence, the Villa Bagnaia, in 1686, where Romanelli's name is again mentioned. Later, the painting was owned by Cardinal Benedetto Barberini and appears as no. 457 of his inventory of 1844, in which its recorded measurements are greater by a palm in height (hgt. plm.s 10, wid. plm.s 8). It was then owned by Duke Carlo Felice Barberini, and inherited by his daughter, Princess Anna Corsini (who died in 1911). It appears as no. 198 in the inventory drawn up on the death of Princess Anna of the works of art in the palazzo at Tagliacozzo in Abruzzo: "Fuga in Egitto, Giovan Francesco Romanelli. Altezza m 2.18 x 1.90, Lire 1000." After the death, in 1919, of Anne's widower, Prince Tommaso Corsini, the painting reappears in Florence, owned by Riccardo Funghini in 1952, who sold it to a Detroit art collector, Mary H. Zimmerman.

In the Barberini documents up to 1686 the painting is described as having a rounded top which, as we mentioned above, contained a representation of God the Father and of the Holy Spirit between clouds above the Holy Family returning from Egypt (Aronberg Lavin 1975, p. 35). After this date, no further mention is made of the arched painted part which had been separated. There are, however, clear traces of red pigment on the upper edge of the canvas which probably correspond to the red mantle of God the Father.

There are a dense web of morphological relations relating to the specific elements of the composition, or rather the single figures within it, starting with the model for the face of the young Jesus, whose diagonal suggests the Sybil in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, with the protagonist of the altarpiece on the high altar of the Duomo of Viterbo (The Glory of Saint Lawrence, and especially with the Orion fresco in the Palazzo Costaguti in Rome, albeit from the late 1640s, after Romanelli's Parisian period. Similarly, St. Joseph is related in type, albeit reversed, with Pluto in The Rape of Proserpine, sold by Christie's in Rome (19 May 1978, lot 219) while, for example, the languid aspect of the face of the angel on the left of The Return from the Flight to Egypt immediately suggests the Saint Cecilia in the Pinacoteca Capitolina. While from a strictly typological point of view there are good reasons to juxtapose the present work with the Pharaoh's Dream, exhibited at the Heim Gallery of London in the summer of 1976, both in regard to the figure of Joseph and the angel who holds the donkey's bridle (corresponding to the figure on the extreme left of the group of three), in a larger stylistic context the work should be seen in the context of two of Romanelli's most important easel paintings: The Adoration of the Shepherds once with Colnaghi in London (1962), and the oval of Venus and Adonis in the Musée des Jacobins in Morlaix. Overall, the manner and the figures of the first picture are really close to those in this Return from the Flight to Egypt, particularly in the group with St. Joseph, a child with a dove, and a peasant woman. The second canvas argues even more strongly for a similar date. Looking at the detail, there is an undeniable family resemblance between the face of the figure of Venus and that of the Virgin in the Thyssen canvas. Finally, the familiar appearance of Adonis can almost be superimposed over the angel on the left of the Flight into Egypt in the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. It has almost the same pose as Romanelli's St. Joseph.

Roberto Contini

17th Century17th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Giovanni Francesco Romanelli. El retorno de la huida a Egipto
Return from the Flight into Egypt
Giovanni Francesco Romanelli

©

Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan at Museu Nacional d´Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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Giovanni Francesco Romanelli. El retorno de la huida a Egipto
Return from the Flight into Egypt
Giovanni Francesco Romanelli

©

Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan at Museu Nacional d´Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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