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In 1753 the younger Tiepolo who, like his father, was an excellent draughtsman, published a series of etchings in Venice under the title "Pictorial Thoughts Suggested by the Flight to Egypt". There were twenty-seven different versions of the Holy Family on its flight from the massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem; in the etching dated 1750 the group resting under a palm-tree is represented in an arrangement similar to that of the picture in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. The scene, pervaded by an idyllic atmosphere, with the figures and the landscape melting into a harmonious unity, is one of the finest of Domenico's early works. At the same time it shows definite signs of the features which most clearly distinguish his art from that of his father, namely a more direct, more intimate tone, greater emphasis on landscape and profane elements, a more banal and at the same time a cooler and drier treatment of the theme.
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