Maffei lived and worked in the Italian cities of Vicenza and Padua, but was profoundly influenced by Venetian painting. At its most characteristic, his elegant vision veers into the mannered elongated figure types and loose brushwork seen in this painting above the doorway. This scene from the biblical book of Genesis shows the angel appearing to Hagar, an enslaved woman in Egypt. Banished with her infant Ishmael to the desert by her new husband, Abraham, Hagar was allegedly saved by a heavenly creature who directed her to a spring of water.
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Credit Line:Bequest of Anna Mont, in memory of Frederick Mont, 2010
Object Number:2012.100.1
According to Genesis (21:14–19), Hagar, Abraham's Egyptian servant, was sent away to the wilderness of Beersheba after giving birth to their son Ishmael. There, running out of water, she put her baby under the shadow of a tree "and she went, and sat down apart from him a good way off, as it were a bowshot; for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat apart from him, and lifted up her voice, and wept." But having heard her voice, God sent an angel who called to Hager and pointed her in the direction of a source of water.
Francesco Maffei, a seventeenth-century Venetian artist deeply influenced by the work of Bassano, Tintoretto, and Veronese, painted this subject around 1657, when he left Vicenza for Padua, where he died in 1660. First published by Pallucchini in 1981, the canvas is stylistically close to Maffei's 1657 Visitation for the high altar of the Oratorio dei Proti in Vicenza (Rossi 1991). Maffei depicts Hagar, richly dressed in red and gold brocade, kneeling under two trees, while the baby Ishmael is behind her, in shadow. The statuesque angel appears to her on the right, pointing to the source of water that will save her life. Another painting of the same subject, now in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (Rossi 1991, p. 94, no. 37), is a later autograph version by Maffei.
Rossi, following Pilo's proposal (Giuseppe Maria Pilo, Carpioni, Venice, 1961, p. 38), suggests that Maffei may have based his composition on Giulio Carpioni's engraving of the Agony in the Garden, where the figure of Christ, kneeling in front of two trees, is similar to Hagar in both the Met and Milan paintings.
Xavier F. Salomon 2011
Frederick Mont, New York (by 1981–d. 1994); his widow, Anna S. Mont, New York (1994–d. 2010)
Rodolfo Pallucchini. La pittura veneziana del Seicento. [Venice], 1981, vol. 1, pp. 192, 194; vol. 2, fig. 604, as formerly in the collection of Frederick Mont, New York.
Paola Rossi. Francesco Maffei. Milan, 1991, pp. 94, 97, no. 49, colorpl. XXXVII, fig. 237, as in the collection of Frederick Mont, New York; dates it about 1657, based on its stylistic similarity to the artist's "Visitation" (Oratorio dei Proti, Vicenza) of that year; calls the composition in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan, a slightly later variant; agrees with Pilo [Giuseppe Maria Pilo, "Carpioni", 1961, p. 38] that the pose of Hagar may be based on that of Christ in Giulio Carpioni's engraving of the "Agony in the Garden".
Xavier F. Salomon in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2010–2012." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 70 (Fall 2012), p. 35, ill. (color).
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, Venice 1696–1770 Madrid)
1725–29
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