Old Sarah and young Hagar

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.

A Modern Application

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.

Drunken Lot

Lot and his Daughters (c. 1651) by the Italian Baroque painter Gian Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666).

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.

Neoclassic Scenery

Pharaoh's daughter finding baby Moses (1855) by the Russian painter Konstantin Dmitriyevich Flavitsky (1830-1866).

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.

Young Judith

Judith and the Head of Holofernes (1608) by the Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Baglione (1571-1643).

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.