Kárpáti Zoltán - Liptay Éva - Varga Ágota szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 101. (Budapest, 2004)

JÚLIA TÁTRAI: The Return of Barent Fabritius's Sacrifice of Manoah to Hungary

46. Willem Drost, Sacrifice of Manoah, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Hofstede de Groot also wrote about this exhibition, claiming that he knew from reliable sources that about twelve to fifteen years earlier, around 1884-87, a London dealer had sawed off the figure of the angel from the original picture. He and Bredius saw the Manoah panel together in London, and he described it as a "characteristic work of Barent Fabritius, which was probably inspired by Rembrandt's picture in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie"(fig. 46).

6 Later he described the painting as such: "Both figures are kneeling to the left in front of an altar. One figure is in bright red clothing, the other is in no less bright blue attire. Its conception is very reminiscent of the kneeling figures of Cornelius' family in the painting known to be the work of B. Fabritius in Braunschweig." (fig. 47)

7 He concluded that while the angel and the figures in the Manoah panel are of the same size, the differences in colour of the backgrounds and the aureoles, as well as the angel's glance, make it questionable whether the two parts really did at one time form a whole. The angel, he argued, in keeping with the biblical text, should have been flying away rather than looking down. He relates the style in which the angel is painted to that of works by Rembrandt from the second half of the 1650s, 6 Today attributed to Willem Drost, The Sacrifice of Manoah, 1650s, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 1563; the problem of attribution will be discussed later. 7 Barent Fabritius, Saint Peter in the House of Cornelius, 1653, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton UlrichMuseum, inv. no. 268.