Christ and the Woman of Canaan (Matthew 15:21-21; Mark 7:24-30)

Entry

While travelling with his disciples, Christ was beseeched by a woman of Canaan to cure her daughter, who was ‘grievously vexed with a devil’. Christ refused her entreaties, saying ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel’. When the woman persisted, Christ responded metaphorically, ‘It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs’, whereupon the woman of Canaan replied ‘Truth Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table’. Persuaded by the woman’s faith, Christ made her daughter ‘whole’.

While the metaphorical dogs had been included in earlier depictions of the subject,⁸ Lastman’s painting also includes the children eating bread. The crowd entering through a triumphal arch on the left, which includes a man being transported in a wheelbarrow, undoubtedly represents the sick whom Christ healed throughout his travels. Astrid Tümpel has suggested that the figure slightly removed from the main protagonists on the right and holding a large book should be identified as St Matthew, the author of the gospel in which the story of the woman of Canaan is told.⁹ It is more likely, however, that he represents one of the Pharisees or scribes, who are criticized by Christ for adhering to the old law instead of embracing the pure faith that he represents.¹⁰ In the same verse of Matthew in which the story of the woman of Canaan is related, Christ calls the Pharisees and scribes ‘Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me’ (Matthew 15:7-8). While the truly faithful enter through the gate on the left in Lastman’s picture, the Pharisee or scribe stands somewhat apart on the right. The contrast between him and the woman of Canaan in both Matthew’s gospel and the present painting is that although being one of Christ’s people he is faithless, while the woman of Canaan is not a member of the house of Israel, but has great faith.

The main figures are arranged in a semi-circle on a narrow plane in the foreground, a not unusual compositional formula for Lastman. Also typical of the artist are the alternating bands of light and shade, which create a sense of perspective and differentiate secondary figures from primary ones. The Roman architecture adds to the definition of space and sets the scene in the ancient world of the Bible. The tower behind Christ accentuates his central role, and the fact that it is a ruin was probably intended as another contrast between pure faith and the old law. A circular temple adds emphasis to the caesura between the main scene and the figure of the Pharisee or scribe. The background figures are unusually small for Lastman. On the other hand, the children in the left foreground are disproportionately large. Typical for a part of Lastman’s oeuvre, the figures are clad in heavy garments with thick folds. The myriad crisp and angular folds which play such a large role in compositions like Orestes and Pylades Disputing at the Altar (SK-A-2354) are not in evidence here. Lastman used the head of the woman of Canaan again for the figure of Manoah’s wife in his 1624 Sacrifice of Manoah (fig. a).¹¹ A rather disagreeable, though faithful, copy of the present painting was auctioned in Cologne in 1999 with an incorrect attribution to Lastman himself.¹²

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

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. 168.