The Dutch painter Adriaen van der Werff (1669-1722) depicts here how Sarah presents her young slave Hagar to her husband so that he can have children with her. Werff confronts here the old face of Sarah with the young naked and fertile looking body of Hagar.
This painting "The Servant" (1994) is by the American fantasy artist Gerald Brom (born 1965). And though it probably not pretends to be an interpretation of the old story of Salome and St. John the Baptist, it is unavoidable to see that myth in it. The iconography is in this case so strong, that a head on a plate will always be seen as that of St. John.
It’s the typical setting: Lot between his seductive daughters drinking the offered wine (probably to daze his conscience) and in the back the burning Sodom with the statue of the mother half on the way.
Flavitsky was a neoclassic painter and specialized in biblical and Russian legends. What attracts the attention in this painting is above all it’s rationalistic construction: the light, the diagonal lines, the arrangement of the persons.
It’s a very dramatic scenery. A very young and beautiful Judith with that gigantic severed head of Holofernes. In the back her frightened maid.
