Agar and the Angel

Oil on canvas realized in Italy ih the late 17th Century.

The painting depicts the episode from Genesis (21, 9-21) in which the servant Hagar, together woth her little son Ishmael by Abraham, is driven away by the latter to satisfy the request of his wife Sarah and condemed to certain death in the desert of Bathsheba.

The author focuses with remarkable effectiveness and narrative clarity on the culminating moment of the story, when, with Hagae an Ishmael now left without water, they are visited by an angel sent by God to give them soncolation and to indicate a nearby well of water. In this beautiful canvas it is not difficult to recognize the typical characteristics of roman painting in a mature phase f the baroque season, capable of welcoming and summarizing the main rends that estabished themselves in the Ciry in the central decades of the 17th Century.

Leaving the question of attribution still open, it is nevertheless worth noting here the affinities that link this painting to the manner of some of the protagonists of the Roman scene of the second 17th Century, such as Giusepp Chiari, Francesco Trevisani and above all Filippo Lauri.