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
see that picture by Rembrandt which you spoke of in your last letter" 13 and shortly thereafter thanked Theo for sending him the etching made after Rembrandt. 14 In his letter from early August 1889 he again brings up the angel: "Thankyou once more forthe lovely etching after Rembrandt. 1 would very much like to know the picture and to know in which period of his life he painted it. All this goes - along with the 'Portrait of Fabritius' in Rotterdam, the 'Traveler' of the Lacaze Gallery - into a special category in wich the portrait of human being is transformed into something luminous and comforting." 15 In Saint-Rémy in the autumn of that same year, Van Gogh painted an angel based on the etching, but twice as large as the original (fig. 49). 16 His divine messenger with wavy brown hair and wings appears in a bluish-white tunic before a bright blue background. Spots of light arranged in a semi-circle around the head form the angel's radiant halo. Van Gogh painted both hands of the angel, although contemporary descriptions emphasise that in the original only the right hand was visible. 17 The Angel belongs to a series of works painted in Saint-Rémy after other masters -Rembrandt, Delacroix, Millet, Daumier, Doré and Gauguin. Of Van Gogh's models, the most prestigious place was certainly occupied by Rembrandt, who was often mentioned in his letters, and whose etching of the Raising of Lazarus served as the inspiration which would lead him to paint one of the most startling of the Saint-Rémy pictures. 18 We have much less information on the remaining part of the panel in question, which depicts Manoah and his wife kneeling before the altar. As the angel fragment was already on display in 1887, this date serves as ante quern for the dividing of the original painting, which corroborates Hofstede de Groot's above-mentioned information that the pictures were separated around 1884-87. 19 In 1911, in the introduction to the sale catalogue of the Gerhardt Collection, Gábor Térey wrote the following about the picture: "Missing from the Gerhardt Collection is [Rembrandt] himself. But there is a wonderful painting by his important pupil, Bernacrt Fabritius with its subject matter 13 [bid., 186, no. 596 (written 25 June 1889 in Saint-Rémy). 14 Ibid., 194. no. 601 (written 22 August 1889 in Saint-Rémy). 15 Ibid., 195, no. 602 (written 3 or 4 September 1889 in Saint-Rémy). 16 Oil on canvas, 54 x 64 cm, whereabouts unknown; see L'opera pittorica compléta di Van Gogh e i suoi nessi grafici, vol. 2, ed. P. Lecaldano, Milano 1971, no. 747; however, at no. 747a, it is not Courtry's etching that is reproduced. For the colour reproduction of Van Gogh's painted angel, see: I. F. Walther- R. Metzger, Van Gogh. The Complete Paintings. Cologne 1993, 576-78, 543. The above monographs refer not to the letter written to Theo van Gogh, but to a letter written to Emile Bernard, in which the painter refers to a different painting by Rembrandt. The correspondance between Theo and Vincent was first mentioned in the 1956 catalogue of the exhibition arranged in the Haus der Kunst, Munich, where reference was made to Courtry's etching, but only Van Gogh's painting was reproduced; see Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890, exh. cat., Haus der Kunst. Munich 1956. no. 147. 17 See the David P. Sellar and Martin Sedelmayer catalogues in note 10. In Courtry's etching, both hands are visible; thus, it is likely that both hands also appeared in the original, but one may have been less discernible. IK Rembrandt, Raising of Lazarus, ca. 1632, dry point and etching, 370 x 260 mm; Vincent van Gogh, Raising of Lazarus, 1890, oil on paper glued to canvas, 50 x 65 cm, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. S1 69. 19 Sumowski, in his list of works by Rembrandt's pupils and followers, discusses another work showing an angel that was cut from a larger biblical composition, painted by G. W. Horst, and preserved in the Kunsthallc, Bremen; see W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. 2, Landau and Pfalz 1983,2958, no. 1961.
