SEATTLE, WA.- The Seattle Art Museum announced today that it has acquired two new important paintings for the European collection. Both of these works of art are fractional gifts to the museum from local collector and SAM Trustee Barney A. Ebsworth. Francisco Zurbarán’s (Spanish, 1598-1664) The Flight into Egypt (late 1630’s) addresses events following the birth of Jesus. Philippe de Champaigne’s (French, 1602-74) The Visitation (1643) is one of four paintings devoted to the Virgin Mary that were created for the family chapel of an official in the French royal court at the Church of the Oratory of Jesus in Paris. Both paintings will be displayed for the first time at the Seattle Art Museum starting Wednesday, December 21, 2011 in the European baroque galleries. Seventeenth-century religious painters strove to make stories from the Bible real and urgent for their contemporary audiences. Francisco de Zurb