Pilgrim in a Landscape

Joachim Patinir, Rest on the flight to Egypt, ca. 1520, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The first landscapes in European artistic painting, i.e. the first landscapes wherein the landscape dominates the representation, were painted by Joachim Patinir (ca. 1485-1524) who used to work in Antwerp. One of his major works ‘Rest during the flight to Egypt’ in Madrid, shows clearly that this new form of painting owes a lot to the devotional painting. The breastfeeding mother of God takes an important place in the representation, be it not in a renaissance interior, but in a more or less realistic landscape. Spread over the landscape there are different scenes of the partly biblical, partly legendary history of the flight to Egypt. This episode of Jezus’ life, according to Matthew (2:13-18), took place soon after Jezus birth’, and stands for the persecution by the soldiers of Herod, who try to kill the child, and of the children’s slaughter in Bethlehem, where Jezus was born. According to this we see on the right in the background soldiers messing around in a little Flemish-like village that represents Bethlehem, and we can also see – some more closer – the persecutors demanding the right road to a farmer. On the left in the background a temple-like building represents Egypt, the land where Mary and Joseph took refuge. The divinity that is tumbling off its piedestal, represented in a very small scene, has a legendary origin and is a tribute to Jezus, the ‘true God’.

At the same time this story, according to late-medieval literary modifications of Jezus’ history of life, has been upgraded in this painting to a more general truth: human life on earth is like a pilgrimage. The pilgrims motive comes forth firstly with the luggage at the feet of Mary and the typical pilgrim way of clothing of Joseph, who is approaching mother and child from the left. But also the landscape itself contains certain details, though some very small, that can be seen in this light. To name but one: the hardly visible castle high in the mountains on the left in the background. This motif stands as a symbol for the aim of the life’s pilgrimage, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city in the afterward where God keeps a house for every true pilgrim. The inaccessibility of this castle points at the difficulties that have to be defeated by the pilgrim on the narrow path of life, before he can reach his home here. For the rest the landscape represents, also in many different details the sinfulness of the world were through leads the pilgrimage of life.

In the realistic outlook of the landscape the representation closely relates to the world of living of the 16th-century spectator. By the multitude of details that are spread around the landscape, it takes some time and trouble for the spectator to see and understand all motives up to the far away backgrounds. As such the spectator experiences with the eye and with his mind the same trouble as is proper to the going on the difficult path of life through the world.