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End Notes
​Elsheimer's Flight  into Egypt

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[1] Deborah Howard, "Elsheimer's Flight into Egypt and the Night Sky in the Renaissance". Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 55 (2): 212 (1992).
[2] Howard (1992), op cit. It currently hangs in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
[3] Bible, Matthew: 2:2. It is possible that the “‘star” was in fact an appearance of Halley’s comet: see our article Comets in Art. 
[4] This was the so-called Massacre of the Innocents.
[5] Matthew 2:14.
[6] This was quite innovative at the time.
[7] Florian Heine, “The Universe, Infinite Distance….”, in The First Time: Innovations in Art, Bucher, Munich, 2007, at 108.
[8] Heine, op cit.
[9] Judith H Dobrzynski, “The Story Within a landscape”, The Wall Street Journal, 20 March 2010. Accessed at http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703976804575114204213855436
[10] Luke 2:8.
[11] Mary is commonly associated with the Moon, for example in Cigoli’s Immaculate Conception 1612 and Murillo’s Immaculate Conception of 1670: see Gerhard Hartl and Christian Sicka, essay in Reinhold Baumstark, ed. Von Neuen Sternen. Adam Elsheimers “Flucht nach Ägypten”. Cat. Exh, Pinakothek-Dumont, Munich and Cologne 2005/6.
[12] Genesis 28:12. See Rüdiger Klessmann & Ors, Adam Elsheimer 1578-1610 (Catalogue), National Gallery of Scotland/ Paul Holbertin, Edinburgh 2006, at 174. An angel climbing the Ladder to Heaven is also depicted on the West Front at Bath Abbey.
[13] Hollander has commented that this outwardly prosaic depiction against a vast backdrop gives the work a camera-like quality – cinematic rather than theatrical: see Anne Hollander, Moving Pictures, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London 1991, at 104.
[14] Deborah Howard and Malcolm S Longair, “Elsheimer, Galileo, and The Flight into Egypt, Conf Paper, The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena VI, ASP Conference Series 441 (2011).
[15] Heine, op cit; Hartl, op cit.
[16] Howard (2011), op cit; Keith Andrews, Adam Elsheimer: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1977, at 155.
[17] Klessmann, op cit, at 177.
[18] Howard (2011), op cit at 27.
[19] See generally Roberta JM Olson and Jay M Pasachoff, “Moon-Struck: Artists Rediscover Nature and Observe”, Earth, Moon and Planets 85-86 at 303 (2001).
[20] Klessmann, op cit at 38.
[21] Howard (1992) at 212; Howard (2011) at 23.
[22] Heine, op cit.
[23] A similar use of light-sources appears much late in Caspar David Friedrich’s Evening on the Baltic Sea (1831).
​
​© Philip McCouat 2016

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