Unlike the adoration of the shepherds, which took place at night according to the gospel account, the nocturnal setting for the Holy Family´s flight into Egypt was an invention of the painter, since Mathew 2: 13-15 narrates how an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him that the child was in danger, but does not state that the Family departed at night or preferred to leave at sunset. Indeed, there were few pictorial precedents of night-time Flight scenes, and Jacopo himself had always set the scene in the daytime in previous decades: Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa (1532-1537), Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio (1542), and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena (1544-1545). Although in need of restoration, the painting is of considerable quality, and it seems reasonable to attribute it to Francesco, who, according to Ballarin, is responsible for a preparatory drawing housed in the Louvre (Cabinet des dessins, n. 5277) (Text drawn from Falomir, M.: Los Bassano en la España del Siglo de Oro, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2001, p. 232).