Sarah leads Hagar to Abraham
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| Sarah leads Hagar to Abraham |
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| Adriaen van der Werff , 1699 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 76.3 x 61.2 cm |
| Bavarian State Painting Collections , State Gallery in the New Schleissheim Palace |
Sara leads Hagar to Abraham is a history painting by the Palatinate court painter Adriaen van der Werff . It was written in 1699 at the court of the Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz in Düsseldorf and tells the story of the childlessness of Sarah , Abraham's wife, handed down in Genesis . The late baroque painting is one of the most important creations of Dutch painting in the Golden Age .
Description and meaning
The group picture shows - following on from the narration of the archparents in the biblical tradition - Abraham, Sarah and Hagar , the Egyptian slave of Sarah , in Abraham's bedroom. Abraham, who wears a gray full beard as a sign of his advanced age, sits with bared upper body in a luxurious ambience on his bed. The stature of his chest and shoulders show the male proportions of classical antiquity . The room is contoured by noble draperies , a fluted column rises in the corner , in front the scene is framed by a carved ebony table on which a magnificent vessel stands.
Abraham's gaze is directed to his wife Sara, who is standing next to him, who also appears to be an aged person due to her angular facial features and wrinkled skin. In contrast to her, the slave Hagar is shown in the foreground in the prime of her life. In accordance with the baroque ideal of beauty, her skin is flawless, her complexion ivory-colored and her body voluptuous. She tries in vain to cover her naked, submissively bent body, which the painter lets light shine brightly through his lighting and thus shows the viewer in the most sensual way, with clothes and cloths. In her shame, she lowers her gaze while Abraham and Sarah, the real actors behind her, talk intensively. The explosive topic of the conversation is indicated in the gestures of the hands of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham's left hand rests hesitantly on the slave's shoulder, his right hand gesticulating freely in the room. Sara takes her heart with her hand. The conversation revolves around the problem of her childlessness. God had promised offspring through angels to Abraham, but given their advanced age, the couple had doubts and worried about the continued existence of the dynasty. If Abraham died childless, his house slave Elieser of Damascus would inherit the property. Therefore Sarah suggests that Abraham and the slave Hagar should father the desired offspring.
Abraham accepts Sara's suggestion after the conversation shown and begets the son Ishmael with Hagar . Later Abraham and Sarah fathered a son: Isaac . As a result, conflicts arise between Hagar and Sarah, which lead to the repudiation of Hagar and Ishmael by Abraham. While Ishmael is considered the biblical progenitor of the Arabs , Isaac is seen as the biblical ancestor of the Israelites - the twelve tribes of Israel . So the biblical promise of rich offspring was fulfilled.
The triangular relationship described between Abraham, Sarah and Hagar shows several religious meanings, especially with regard to the biblical commandment of monogamy . The relationship between Abraham and Sarah is portrayed in the biblical tradition as the only legitimate relationship - marriage : Abraham, with Hagar as concubine - incredibly doubting God's promise - brings into the world an “illegitimate” offspring in the form of the firstborn Ishmael, nevertheless it is fulfilled God's covenant with Abraham in the conception and birth of Isaac.
Origin and provenance
As early as 1696 Adriaen van der Werff, at that time still working in Rotterdam , had dealt with the religious theme of the triangular relationship between Abraham, Saras and Hagar. For the Rotterdam regent Adriaen Paets (1657–1712) he created two related paintings that are now in different places: Sara leads Hagar to Abraham , the previous version of the painting described above, now in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg , and The Rejection the Hagar , today in the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden .
From 1697 van der Werff worked as a court painter at the Electoral Palatinate court in Düsseldorf. He was commissioned by the Elector Johann Wilhelm to produce a second version of both paintings. The painting discussed here was the first of the two counterparts in 1699. The Düsseldorf version simplified the presentation and refined its sleek style. In its execution, the painting was created for hanging in a princely living room or cabinet. The exhibition of the picture in a church would have been unthinkable, despite the biblical subject, if the lascivious depiction of the naked female slave according to the ideas of the time would have been considered a violation of current conventions.
The drama of childlessness staged in the picture was of particular personal importance for Elector Johann Wilhelm. After a childless first marriage, he married Anna Maria Luisa de 'Medici in 1691 . This second marriage was also childless when his court painter van der Werff painted the picture. The message that the picture motif was supposed to convey to its owner was therefore the hope that, through God's help, his second wife might give him a biological son after all. He hoped in vain for an "Isaac", however, and in 1716 the elector died without any legitimate descendants.
With the counterpart made in 1701, Hagar's repudiation , and among other pictures by van der Werff, the painting soon found its way into a hall of the Düsseldorf Gemäldegalerie, which was built in 1709 . As part of this exhibition, it contributed to the prestige and fame of the gallery. In connection with the events of the Third Coalition War , Elector Maximilian IV had the collection evacuated to Kirchheimbolanden Castle in 1805 ; later, as King of Bavaria, he illegally added it to his Munich collections. As part of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen , the painting is now in the State Gallery of the New Schleißheim Palace in Oberschleißheim .
reception
A prominent visitor who viewed the painting in the Düsseldorf gallery in 1788 and who felt particularly attracted by the picture, so that he was the only one in the collection to mention it by name in his writings, was Thomas Jefferson , then ambassador of the United States in Paris , later third US president. Impressed by the incarnate of the portrayed slave girl Hagar, he wrote to his friend Maria Cosway in a letter: "I would definitely swap places with Abraham, even if that meant that I would be dead for five or six thousand years." A punch line for this aperçus lies in the biography of Jefferson: With his slave Sally Hemings , the servant and half-sister of his wife Martha , who died in 1782 , he had a relationship that resulted in several children.
literature
- Barbara Gaethgens: Adriaen van der Werff, 1659–1722 . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 978-3-4220-0780-2 , pp. 138, 259 (cat. No. 51).
- Mariët Westermann: A Worldly Art. The Dutch Republic, 1585-1718 . Yale University Press, New Haven / CT 1996, ISBN 0-300-10723-4 , pp. 170 f. (Cat. No. 123).
Web links
- Sara sends Abraham Hagar to the data sheet in the sammlung.pinakothek.de portal( Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barbara Gaethgens, p. 138
- ↑ Kevin J. Hayes: The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson . Oxford University Press, New York / NY 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-530758-0 , p. 362 ( Google Books )
- ↑ Jürgen Overhoff: Ein Kaiser für Amerika , article from October 31, 2012 in the zeit.de portal , accessed on April 15, 2020