Two leading artists of the Flemish school were Quentin Massys and Joachim
Patinir. Massys (1466-1530) began a new epoch in Netherlandish art; he
served as a “connecting link” between Jan van Eyck and Rubens. Patinir
(died 1524) was one of the first artists to emphasize the landscape rather
than the figures in a painting, but the time had not yet come when
landscape could be painted for itself alone. It was necessary to relate
it with the familiar religious painting of the day by introducing some
biblical or legendary theme. A favorite subject was the flight of the
Holy Family into Egypt. This is the subject of our panel-painting in
which these two great masters collaborated; the landscape and the smaller
figures by Patinir, the group of the Holy Family in the foreground by
Quentin Massys. It is related that the Holy Family, closely pursued by
Herod’s soldiers, chanced to encounter by the roadside a man sowing wheat
in a field. The Virgin spoke to him, saying that if anyone inquired if
they had passed he should answer, “Such persons came by when I was sowing
wheat”; then by a miracle Jesus caused the wheat to spring up and ripen in
one night. The next day when the farmer was cutting the wheat, those
pursuing the Holy Family came up and asked if he had seen them. He
replied as he had been told, with the result that the soldiers turned
back, convinced that they had mistaken the road and that the fugitives had
gone elsewhere.