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
visible, perhaps in their entirety, and furthermore that the angel was probably looking downwards at Manoah and his wife. Thus, the width of the wings and the direction of the angel's glance indicate more or less the figure's presumed place in the composition. The picture reconstructed in this way would have been 90 to 100 cm tall; and its original width must have corresponded to the 71 cm width of the Manoah panel (fig. 51 ). The question of whether the picture was straight or had an arched top, as in the Stockholm and Dresden drawings, is today difficult to answer. 41 In any case, unlike contemporaneous depictions, the painter did not place the scene in a landscape or other environment, but rather chose a dark brown, richly toned background. The corresponding sizes of the figures, as well as the above-mentioned accounts of Bredius and Hofstede de Groot make it highly probable that the two pictures once belonged together. Barent Fabritius's authorship of the panel - aside from Sumowski's scarcely justifiable doubts - has never been debated. 42 Hofstede de Groot observed a similar approach in the Manoah panel and the picture Saint Peter in the House of Cornelius signed by Fabritius and dated 1653 (fig. 47). The analogy is extraordinarily apt, as the two works are also comparable in form and use of colour. In addition, Manoah's and Saint Peter's facial types are alike, as are the position of the hands in prayer and the kneeling postures of Manoah's wife and the female figure on the left in the Braunschweig picture. Also noticeable in both pictures are the long-fingered, seemingly boneless hands and the simple, thick material of the clothes falling in soft folds. Yet another similarity can be found in the prominent local colours - red, yellow, black and white - in striking contrast to the basic brownish tones. No current studies have been written on the oeuvre of Barent Fabritius. 43 Since Daniel Pont's monograph, only Sumowski has attempted to assemble Fabritius's oeuvre among the works of Rembrandt's pupils, and no monographic exhibition has been dedicated to his works. Along with the signed and dated pictures, the paintings Sumowski attributes to Fabritius encompass a wide variety of styles and quality. In addition to the Braunschweig painting of Saint Peter, Sacrifice of Manoah is closely related to Barent's other works from the first half of the 1650s, such as The Dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael and The Naming of Saint John the Baptist. 44 The pictures bear 41 While use of the arched top was rare, there are many cases in which Rembrandt himself and his pupils employed it, see Rembrandt, Visitation, Detroit Institute of Arts; Young Woman in Bed, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland; Self-Portrait, London, National Gallery; Raising of Lazarus, etching; The Adoration of the Shepherds, Munich, Alte Pinakothek; Gerard Dou, Self Portrait, private collection; Govaert. Flinck, Diana Bathing, London, National Gallery. 42 Sumowski 1957-58 (n. 28), 3095, no. 2066. Sumowski could only have seen the panel from the Gerhardt Collection and the angel in old photos. 43 Other significant studies dealing with the works of Fabritius, see H. F. Wijnman, "De schilder Carel Fabritius (1622-1654). Een reconstructie van zijn leven en werken," Oud Holland 48 (1931), 100-141 ; W. R. Valentiner, "Carel and Barent Fabritius," The Art Bulletin 14, no. 3 (1932), 197-242; W. Liedtke, "The 'Three Parables' by Barent Fabritius with a chronological list of his paintings dating from 1660 onward," Burlington Magazine 119, no. 890 (1977), 316-27. 44 Barent Fabritius, Dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael, oil on canvas, 109.9 x 109.9 cm, San Francisco, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, inv. no. 50.34; The Naming of Saint John the Baptist, oil on canvas, 36.8 x 48 cm, London, National Gallery, inv. no. NG 1339.
