Holy Family Traveling by Donkey

About this drawing

The Holy Family traveling by donkey usually depicts the Flight into Egypt, an episode from the Gospel of Matthew. In that account, an angel warns Joseph in a dream that King Herod is planning to kill the child. The family leaves at night and stays in Egypt until Herod dies.

Matthew never mentions a donkey at all, and he gives no details of the road. The animal entered through later tradition and through apocryphal writings, which added tales of palm trees bowing to offer dates and springs bursting out of the desert. Egypt made sense as a refuge, since it had large Jewish communities and lay beyond Herod's reach.

Egypt's Coptic Christians still honor a string of churches and monasteries along the route they believe the family followed. Artists loved the subject too. Giotto painted it in a chapel in Padua, and Dutch and German painters often turned it into a quiet nighttime landscape. Many American churches now present the story in a new light. Pastors point out that Jesus spent part of his childhood as a refugee, and aid groups use the image to talk about families forced to flee their homes today. That connection helps explain why an old scene of a donkey on a dark road still feels so current.

• holy family
• donkey
• flight into egypt
• lantern