The Flight into Egypt 1548

Curator: This is Augustin Hirschvogel's engraving, "The Flight into Egypt," created in 1548, a key example of Northern Renaissance printmaking. Editor: The immediate feeling is almost one of vulnerability. The fine, almost frantic lines making up the landscape suggest a precariousness for this little family fleeing across it. Curator: Absolutely. Hirschvogel masterfully uses line to create depth. Observe how the density and direction of the engraved lines modulate to define form and texture—the subtle shading giving volume to the figures. Editor: And it's precisely the method that makes the meaning. Printmaking at this time demanded precision and skill. Look closely: this scene, ostensibly about holy protection, is physically brought into existence through very laborious human effort and craft. Each mark a deliberate choice. Curator: Consider the composition, too. The figures of Mary, Jesus, and Joseph are rendered with delicate detail against this panoramic landscape. The tension between the foreground action and the receding scenery enhances the narrative drama. It evokes a kind of sublime terror when you place these tiny figures within the grandeur and implied danger of the natural world. Editor: It makes you wonder about the conditions in which Hirschvogel was working. Was he trying to replicate some imagined biblical setting, or referencing the very ground beneath his feet as he engraved this? It seems an assertion that divinity is not only found in immaculate scenes but in the realities of toil and passage. The printed text underneath acts almost as the printer's own sermon in asserting the morality of what’s presented above. Curator: Perhaps he aimed to present a universal human story through biblical imagery, connecting the historical event with contemporary viewers' experiences. This act of purification of subject matter in the eyes of an ever modernizing landscape... It's profoundly compelling. Editor: Seeing it this way makes me respect the labour and material processes embedded in the work all the more. Every line echoes human movement.