Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (Genesis 32:26-31)

Entry

While Breenbergh’s early Roman work consists mainly of small classical landscapes staffed with figures but without a particular subject, the majority of his landscapes painted after his return to Amsterdam in the early 1630s contain biblical subjects. As in the present painting, his choice of themes, most of them taken from the Old Testament, was similar to that of the Pre-Rembrandtists in Amsterdam. Although the subject of Jacob wrestling with the angel is extremely rare, it does have a predecessor in a drawing and painting by Moyses van Wtenbrouck dated 1623.⁵ In these, Jacob is also seen from behind wrestling with the angel on the near bank of the river Jordan while his family is seen crossing the river at Jabbok in the background. The physical act of the angel dislocating Jacob’s hip as described in the Bible is emphasized in the Rijksmuseum painting by the angel’s left leg, which is flung forcefully around Jacob, whose hat has fallen to the ground.⁶ The stick next to Jacob’s coat in the left foreground might refer to the previous episode, when Jacob prayed to God, saying that at his first crossing of the river he only had his staff and now he had become two bands.⁷

Although Breenbergh’s paintings from the early 1630s are mostly larger in size and show crowded histories and richly adorned landscapes, the majority of those from the late 30s have only two protagonists, as in the present picture. Furthermore, his brushwork became increasingly transparent and his palette more or less monochromatic, with brown ochre predominating. Even though the brown tonality of this composition could allude to the early morning, the time of day until which the wrestling bout lasted, it is nevertheless typical of Breenbergh’s paintings from the 1630s, which are more subdued than the brightly coloured small cabinet pieces he painted in Italy. An example of the latter is a small oval, the only other depiction of this subject attributed to Breenbergh. It shows the angel and Jacob in bright yellow, blue and red garments under a blue sky.⁸

A drawing by Breenbergh in the Frits Lugt Collection that is traditionally dated around the same time as the Rijksmuseum picture also shows Jacob and the angel wrestling on a plain clearly set apart from the valley in the background, in which Jacob’s family can be seen. In the drawing, though, the two figures are much closer to the foreground, which is completely shaded by trees on the left.⁹ It is not clear if it dates from before or after the painting. The fact that it was strongly influenced by Jan Pynas, and that the struggle between Jacob and the angel is less convincing, could be arguments for dating the drawing earlier than the painting.¹⁰ However, the differences between the drawing and the painting are too great to consider the former a preliminary study.

The present painting may very well have been the one in the 1750 sale of the estate of the artist Cornelis Troost,¹¹ as the subject is so rare, and the only other known painting of this subject by Breenbergh was probably part of a set. The catalogue, however, does not give the measurements of the paintings, which makes it impossible to substantiate this assumption.

Taco Dibbits, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
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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. 34.