The Reconciliation Between Jacob and Esau, Peter Paul Rubens (after), c. 1628 – (Peter Paul Rubens) ◄ prijašnji Sljedeći ►

Umjetnik: Peter Paul Rubens

Datum: 1628

Veličina: 33 x 25 cm

Tehnika: Oil On Panel

The event depicted is recounted in Genesis 33:1-10. Jacob and his brother are reconciled following Jacob’s theft of his brother’s birthright by tricking their father Isaac. Beside Jacob are probably his wives Rachel and Leah with their children, behind are the cattle intended by Jacob as a gift for Esau. Esau is shown in armour as a soldier, for his father had said to him ‘And by the sword shalt thou live’ (Genesis 28:40); in the Biblical story, he came accompanied by four hundred men (Genesis 32:6). But for the landscape, the present work is a copy after the composition depicted by Peter Paul Rubens at the Neues Schloss Schleissheim near Munich5 (rather than after the modello for it as Rooses believed); the Schleissheim painting was sent or taken by Rubens to Madrid in 1628 as one of the group commissioned by King Philip IV of Spain through his aunt, the Archduchess Isabella.6 Rubens left Antwerp for Madrid in the late summer of that year. There must have existed an unrecorded studio replica, from which the Rijksmuseum picture and other copies were made, because four drawn copies of details are in the so-called ‘Rubens Cantoor’ in the print room of the Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen; these were made by Willem Panneels (c. 1600-1634), left in charge of the studio while Rubens was in Madrid and London.7 The present paining is on an oak support stamped with the mark of its maker, Michiel Claessens, active in Antwerp 1590-1637;8 the wood from the Baltic area would have been ready for use from 1624 but more plausibly from 1630. Another reduced copy can be seen in the foreground of Willem van Haecht’s (1593-1637) Art Cabinet with Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife,9 which is more faithful to the original in that no landscape background is introduced. Here even more of the neck of the foremost camel is shown, and its head is as misunderstood as it also is in the Rijksmuseum copy. The lances behind Esau are similarly arranged. Van Haecht made copies of paintings for reproduction in engravings10 and may have specialized in individual painted copies as well as in the ‘art cabinets’, for which he is known.11 The handling of the museum picture has little in common with that which could be associated with Rubens; indeed, it might possibly be the work of Van Haecht. But a comparison would have to be made with an accepted copy by Van Haecht on this scale, of which none is as yet in the public domain. Gregory Martin, 2022