Vincent de Kastav, The Flight into Egypt

1474
Fresco
Church of St. Mary, Beram, Croatia

This fresco is different from the usual Flight into Egypt images. The Christ Child is swaddled. Mary rides a horse, not an ass,and St. Joseph is not pictured.

The figure leading the horse on the left edge is most likely Salome. He does not have a halo, so he would not be St. Joseph. Salome accompanied the family in The History of Joseph the Carpenter. According to some manuscripts of Pseudo-Matthew he was Mary's stepfather, the third husband of St. Anne. He also appears with his beard, satchel, and staff in this fragment of an altar screen, also from Croatia but five centuries earlier.

The mature-looking woman with the staff on the right edge seems to have a halo, so she may be St. Anne, Salome's wife and Mary's mother. She seems too old to be the "girl" that Pseudo-Matthew says accompanied Mary on the journey.

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Photographed at the site by Claire Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.