The Flight into Egypt

Despite a slender graphic oeuvre of seven engravings only, Hendrik Goudt became one of the most influential printmakers of the early 17th century, inspiring and challenging younger artists, including Jan van de Velde II (see lot 21), Hercules Segers and Rembrandt, who admired his mastery in the depiction of light and darkness through graphic means. His works sought to translate the intense chiaroscuro of Adam Elsheimer's exquisite, often nocturnal paintings into the print medium. Goudt lived in the German painter's house in Rome for six years and may have been his pupil - or possibly his patron? The original painting in oil on copper of The Flight into Egypt by Elsheimer was in Goudt's collection in Utrecht, where it was seen by the German painter and art historian Joachim von Sandrart (1606-1688). It is today at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Goudt seems to have completed two of his prints while still living in Rome; the remaining five were completed after his return to Utrecht. The present one his largest and most ambitious and technically complex plate, and the artist employed etching, engraving and stippling to create the most subtle and yet spectacular light effects originating from different sources: fire and torchlight, the rising full moon illuminating the clouds and reflected in the still waters of a pond, the starry night sky and the Milky Way, all rendered with finest nuances and crystalline sharpness.
The Flight into Egypt is a rare print and, according to Clifford Ackley, '... the most difficult to find in early well-preserved impressions (...), in which the individual lines virtually disappear in masses of dark velvety tone comparable to those in a mezzotint' (Ackley, 1981, p. 73). The impression he referred to was the example in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (inv. no. 63.526), which is printed on a sheet with the same watermark found in the present example.