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拍品专文
Within sacrificial flames, an angel ascends heavenward while a man falls to his knees in wonder. Pieter Lastman captured the most dramatic instant of divine revelation in this signed and dated painting of 1624, a rare mature composition that exemplifies the artist's singular vision at the very moment he was shaping the course of Dutch painting. It was in this same year that a young Rembrandt van Rijn entered Lastman's studio in Leiden for six months of instruction that would prove transformative. While for centuries Lastman's name was eclipsed by that of his more celebrated pupil, he is now recognised as a dynamic and consequential artist in his own right, one without whose teaching Rembrandt might have followed an entirely different trajectory.
Lastman distinguished himself through his predilection for obscure Old Testament narratives that had seldom, if ever, been rendered in paint, finding in them opportunities to explore his favourite theme: the confrontation between mortal man and divine presence. The present work depicts The Sacrifice of Manoah (Judges 13:1-23), a tale of longing, prophecy and miraculous intervention. The biblical account tells of Manoah, a Danite, and his barren wife who beseeched God for a child. An angel appeared first to the wife, foretelling that she would bear a son destined to deliver Israel from Philistine occupation. When she recounted this visitation to her husband, Manoah prayed that the angel might appear to him as well. His entreaties were answered, and when the divine messenger returned, he instructed Manoah to offer a sacrificial goat. As the flames consumed the offering, the angel was borne upward to heaven in the fire itself, prompting Manoah to fall prostrate in astonishment. The prophecy would be fulfilled in the birth of Samson, who would indeed liberate his people. It was precisely this approach to narrative that Rembrandt absorbed from Lastman, and he would make his own foray into the subject in a pen-and-ink drawing of circa 1635–38 (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen; fig. 1), reinventing it rather than imitating.
Lastman seized upon the most theatrically charged moment of the narrative: the instant the angel ascends in a swirl of billowing robes through the conflagration. Manoah, resplendent in a vibrant red robe, has collapsed halfway to his knees, hands outstretched in wonderment towards the departing celestial figure. In the background, almost obscured from view, his wife looks on in silent awe. Lastman paid scrupulous attention to the biblical text, in which the wife remains a subsidiary presence, not even granted the dignity of a name. For her physiognomy, the artist drew upon an earlier invention, repurposing the head of a woman from his Christ and the Woman of Canaan of 1617 (Tümpel, op. cit., 1991, pp. 104-5, no. 10). The panel was evidently sufficiently complete by 1622 for the artist to inscribe and date it that year, before amending the date to 1624 – the change still visible to the naked eye – suggesting a period of sustained reworking.
For seventeenth-century Christians, Samson stood as a prefiguration of Christ, and Lastman wove these typological implications throughout the composition with characteristic subtlety. In the lower left, a peacock serves as an emblem of immortality and the Resurrection, its inclusion rooted in the ancient belief that its flesh was incorruptible. The theological symbolism extends to the sacrificial pyre itself, upon which Lastman painted a sculpted relief of Moses and the Brazen Serpent, an allusion to the verses from John 3:14-15: ‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (ibid., p. 120).
The artist's delight in depicting sumptuous objects is evident in the gilt plate and ewer positioned in the lower left, ornate vessels that afforded him the opportunity to display his masterful handling of paint and depiction of lustrous surfaces. Such richly decorated elements became hallmarks of Lastman's compositions, while additional narrative details – the axe, the skinned goat awaiting sacrifice – heighten the realism and theatrical tension. As was customary in Lastman's practice, he returned repeatedly to subjects that captivated his imagination, exploring them from varied perspectives and with evolving compositional solutions – a tendency that would be inherited by his most famous pupil. At least one other version of The Sacrifice of Manoah by Lastman is known – a painting of 1627 currently on loan to the Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam (ibid., pp. 128-9, no. 21). This latter work stands as undeniable testament to the enduring hold this narrative of divine encounter exerted upon the artist’s creative vision.
Lastman distinguished himself through his predilection for obscure Old Testament narratives that had seldom, if ever, been rendered in paint, finding in them opportunities to explore his favourite theme: the confrontation between mortal man and divine presence. The present work depicts The Sacrifice of Manoah (Judges 13:1-23), a tale of longing, prophecy and miraculous intervention. The biblical account tells of Manoah, a Danite, and his barren wife who beseeched God for a child. An angel appeared first to the wife, foretelling that she would bear a son destined to deliver Israel from Philistine occupation. When she recounted this visitation to her husband, Manoah prayed that the angel might appear to him as well. His entreaties were answered, and when the divine messenger returned, he instructed Manoah to offer a sacrificial goat. As the flames consumed the offering, the angel was borne upward to heaven in the fire itself, prompting Manoah to fall prostrate in astonishment. The prophecy would be fulfilled in the birth of Samson, who would indeed liberate his people. It was precisely this approach to narrative that Rembrandt absorbed from Lastman, and he would make his own foray into the subject in a pen-and-ink drawing of circa 1635–38 (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen; fig. 1), reinventing it rather than imitating.
Lastman seized upon the most theatrically charged moment of the narrative: the instant the angel ascends in a swirl of billowing robes through the conflagration. Manoah, resplendent in a vibrant red robe, has collapsed halfway to his knees, hands outstretched in wonderment towards the departing celestial figure. In the background, almost obscured from view, his wife looks on in silent awe. Lastman paid scrupulous attention to the biblical text, in which the wife remains a subsidiary presence, not even granted the dignity of a name. For her physiognomy, the artist drew upon an earlier invention, repurposing the head of a woman from his Christ and the Woman of Canaan of 1617 (Tümpel, op. cit., 1991, pp. 104-5, no. 10). The panel was evidently sufficiently complete by 1622 for the artist to inscribe and date it that year, before amending the date to 1624 – the change still visible to the naked eye – suggesting a period of sustained reworking.
For seventeenth-century Christians, Samson stood as a prefiguration of Christ, and Lastman wove these typological implications throughout the composition with characteristic subtlety. In the lower left, a peacock serves as an emblem of immortality and the Resurrection, its inclusion rooted in the ancient belief that its flesh was incorruptible. The theological symbolism extends to the sacrificial pyre itself, upon which Lastman painted a sculpted relief of Moses and the Brazen Serpent, an allusion to the verses from John 3:14-15: ‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (ibid., p. 120).
The artist's delight in depicting sumptuous objects is evident in the gilt plate and ewer positioned in the lower left, ornate vessels that afforded him the opportunity to display his masterful handling of paint and depiction of lustrous surfaces. Such richly decorated elements became hallmarks of Lastman's compositions, while additional narrative details – the axe, the skinned goat awaiting sacrifice – heighten the realism and theatrical tension. As was customary in Lastman's practice, he returned repeatedly to subjects that captivated his imagination, exploring them from varied perspectives and with evolving compositional solutions – a tendency that would be inherited by his most famous pupil. At least one other version of The Sacrifice of Manoah by Lastman is known – a painting of 1627 currently on loan to the Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam (ibid., pp. 128-9, no. 21). This latter work stands as undeniable testament to the enduring hold this narrative of divine encounter exerted upon the artist’s creative vision.