Pharaoh Gives Sarah Back to Abraham (Genesis 12:18-20)

Entry

From the time it was donated to the Rijksmuseum by Abraham Bredius in 1885, the subject of the present painting has been identified as Abimelech, king of Gerar, returning Sarah to Abraham (Genesis 20:14). The painting more likely illustrates another, very similar story in which Pharaoh returns Sarah to Abraham (Genesis 12:18-20). In both Old Testament stories, Abraham fears that he will be murdered if it is known that the beautiful Sarah is his wife and asks her to pretend that she is his sister. While sojourning in Egypt she is taken into Pharaoh’s house, and when Abraham and Sarah are in Gerar, it is the local king who sends for her. God punished Pharaoh with plagues for taking Sarah (Genesis 12:17), while he ‘closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech’ (Genesis 20:18). In addition to restoring Sarah to Abraham, Abimelech gives him ‘sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants’ as well as a thousand pieces of silver, and entreats him to dwell in his land (Genesis 20:14-16). Pharaoh not only gives Abraham sheep, oxen and male and female servants but ‘he asses (...) and she asses, and camels’ (Genesis 12:16). Unlike Abimelech, Pharaoh does not give Abraham pieces of silver, and instead of asking him to dwell in his kingdom he ‘sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had’ (Genesis 12:20). In one of the very few depictions of Abimelech returning Sarah to Abraham, an engraving by Antonio Tempesta, the king presents Abraham with a bag of silver, and sheep and oxen are shown grazing in the background.⁴ While Isaacsz’s painting does not include those elements that unequivocally allude to the Abimelech story, it does include the asses and camels from the version involving Pharaoh. Moreover, the long convoy winding its way into the mountains and the servants gathering their things for a journey in front of the palace suggest the departure of Abraham and Sarah from Egypt rather than their remaining in Gerar.

Given the very limited pictorial tradition for both subjects, there is a distinct possibility that Isaacsz would have known the above-mentioned print by Antonio Tempesta. He may well have derived the staging of his scene from this print, as both works depict the figures on broad steps before a palace with a landscape view on the left. Another engraving by Tempesta in the same series showing the dismissal of Hagar⁵ is even closer to Isaacsz’s painting as far as the setting is concerned. Sarah’s costume in the present work was probably based on her dress in Tempesta’s print showing Abimelech returning Sarah to Abraham. Isaacsz’s figure types and drapery style in this painting have much in common with the work of his fellow Amsterdam artist Claes Moeyaert.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

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This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 153.