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

45. Attributed to Barent Fabritius, Angel (fragment), whereabouts unknown However, the painting was not entirely unknown in art historical literature. At the 1898-99 Rembrandt exhibition in London and Amsterdam a panel painting of an angel appeared, which Abraham Bredius had seen years earlier in London in the Sellar Collection (fig. 45). In his critical observations of the exhibition, Bredius quoted the former owner of the painting: 'This head is cropped from a larger Rembrandt work; the large work is not important, but I liked this angel's head so much, that I had it removed [from the picture]. The rest of the picture must be still somewhere here in London." At a later exhibition, Bredius again saw the angel, which was considered a work of Rembrandt from around 1650, and tried to locate the missing part, which he knew must depict Manoah and his wife. It was generally believed that the other fragment was not the work of Rembrandt, and Bredius came to the same conclusion when he finally saw the work: " [...] the picture cannot be Rembrandt's, but rather the work of Barent Fabritius. This, however, makes for a very puzzling situation, since the angel is considerably better painted than the rest. Neverheless, it is certain that the two works at one time formed one complete picture. Perhaps Rembrandt painted only the angel on Fabritius's picture, or Fabritius was more Rembrandt-like here than at any other time?"

5 5 A. Bredius, "Kritische Bemerkungen zur Amsterdamer Rembrandt-Ausstellung," Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, n.s. 10 (1899), 195. It should be noted that Pont identifies the London dealer Martin Colnaghi, and not Sellar, as the one who connected the panel from the Gerhardt Collection with the Angel.