A silver plaque with the Flight into Egypt
Rectangular relief with a finely chased repoussé depiction of the New Testament scene from Matth. 2:13 ('When the Magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt (...) for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”') showing St. Joseph leading the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ on a donkey through a thick forest, copying the engraving by Jan Sadeler the Elder after Maarten de Vos. H 17.2; W 21.6 cm, weight 223 g.
Unmarked, Southern Germany, attributed to Hans IV Pfleger, Augsburg around 1605 - 1610.
A partially identical composition also appears in a series of 16 reliefs with events from the life of Christ published in Weber no. 412.4.
Ingrid Weber attributes the unmarked relief to a South German, probably Augsburg master working in the first quarter of the 17th century - and compares its quality with other designs from the era: "Probably the best work is that of 798 A in a private collection in Hamburg".
The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (inv. no. 1092) also houses a silver relief of Christ on the Mount of Olives with the maker's mark of Hans IV Pfleger (Augsburg 1587 - 1615, Seling no. 1028 k), in which the rendering of the rocks, tree trunks and leafy branches bears a close resemblance to the present scene. See also a crucifixion relief that Melchior I Gelb made in 1605 as a journeyman to Hans IV Pfleger (Seling no. 1305 a, fig. 26).
We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Johan ter Molen, Apeldoorn, for his kind assistance in cataloguing this lot.
Provenance
Private collection, Hamburg.
Literature
This relief illus. in Ingrid Weber, Deutsche, Niederländische und Französische Renaissance Plaketten, Munich 1975, no. 798 A.