This devotional painting shows the Holy Family's Flight into Egypt, to escape the massacre of children ordered by King Herod, as told in the New Testament (Matthew I, 13-15).

Both the technique and the composition derive from El Greco's period of training in Italy, with clear influences from Tintoretto and a treatment of the subject that is typical of Bassano.

Outstanding here is the interest the artist seems to take in the landscape, which is a characteristic totally outside his early training in Byzantine art.