The bowl he gave to the work is the one with which the Virgin draws water from the miraculous spring to quench her son's thirst, while on the other hand Joseph has just picked the dates from the palm to feed him; at the bottom you can see the angel that ties the donkey to the tree, while at the top is a riot of angels on clouds sprinkled with a warm golden light, a divine light that seems to pervade the whole scene. The subject of the painting, commissioned by the Confraternity of San Giuseppe, which had the patronage of a chapel in the Parmesan church of San Sepolcro, depicts the Rest during the return from Egypt, as we understand from the age of the now grown Child, and derives from a passage from the apocryphal Gospel of the Pseudo Matthew: the intent of the clients to give particular prominence to the figure of Joseph, which in fact dominates the entire right half of the composition, is clear. In the calculated and skilful compositional orchestration, all played on the diagonal in which the protagonists of sacred history are arranged, what is most striking, as always in Correggio, is the extraordinary naturalness and the profound sense of humanity that emanates from the divine figures, that emphasis of the "affections" which will be one of the fundamental ingredients of the artist's fortune in the Baroque age. Similarly, the superb choir of angels at the top alludes to the extraordinary twirling of the angels in the heavenly vision of the dome of the Duomo, which Correggio was frescoing in the same years. The wooden ancona, carved by Marcantonio Zucchi on a drawing by the same painter, shows an updated old-fashioned taste, as well as the dedication and completion date of the work in 1530. Of course, this splendid panel was also requisitioned by the Napoleonic government and brought in Paris in 1796. It returned to Parma in 1816 and was exhibited in the rooms of the Gallery dedicated to Correggio's masterpieces.