Abraham and Hagar (Agar chassée de la maison d'Abraham)

Etching with a Biblical scene of the Genesis, illustrating the passage in which Abraham sends Hagar off with her son and she wanders in to the Desert of Beersheba. The composition, as is common in many of Delaune's Biblical scenes, illustrates simultaneously two distinct episodes from history: on the left, Abraham expels Hagar and his son (Genesis 21:14) from his house; on the background, the scene illustrates the passage in which the Angel of the Lord talks to Hagar when she, thinking that her son, Ishmael, will die from dehydration after wandering for so long in the desert, and he consoles her and opens her eyes to a well with water nearby (Genesis 21:15-19). This same subject, with Hagar in the desert, had already been illustrated by Delaune in 1561.



The scene is part of a set of 36 prints illustrating the history of the Genesis, all with an inscription in Latin under the picture, summarizing the passage of the Bible that is subject of the picture. The succession of episodes in this set is somewhat chaotic, as only three plates illustrate the history of Creation, while six are consecrated to the history of Adam and Eve, and with striking breaks in the narration. The existence of more complete sets of drawings by Delaune on the same subject suggest that he might have intended more plates to illustrate the history of the Genesis in a more thorough manner, although the prints are yet to be found. Many of these prints represent, simultaneously, two or more episodes separated in time, following the 16th century tradition, inherited from the Middle Ages. Most of them are also inspired on the engravings by Bernard Salomon, created to illustrate the "Quadrins historiques de la Bible" (Historical Biblical Scenes) by Claude Paradin, first published in Lyon in 1553.