A great tree with brown-gold leaves spreads over the whole scene.
Bible in art · Genesis
Abraham Entertaining the Three Angels
Ferdinand Bol · 1660–1663
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Ferdinand Bol, who had trained with Rembrandt in Amsterdam, painted this enormous canvas — about four metres high — in the early 1660s. He signed it “FBol”.
The three visitors are shown as winged young men: one stands with his back to us, two sit at a table under a great tree. Abraham kneels with a golden ewer, and in a doorway at the right a woman in red looks out to listen.
From the text
- Water brought to wash the visitors’ feet (Genesis 18:4)
- Abraham standing by them under the tree as they eat (Genesis 18:8)
- Sarah listening at the entrance behind him (Genesis 18:10)
The artist’s own
- The three men painted as angels with wings
- A stone arch, an urn and a house with a wooden porch instead of a tent
- A gilded ewer of the kind used in rich Dutch homes of the time
- Abraham kneeling rather than standing by
Details
Under the tree
At the door
A woman in red looks out from the doorway — Sarah, listening.
The standing visitor
One angel turns his back to us, a gold robe slipping from his shoulder, green wings spread.
Abraham
White-bearded and in red, he kneels with a gilded ewer for washing.
Sheep
Beyond the arch, sheep lie in the evening light.
Ferdinand Bol, Dutch, 1616–1680. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (SK-A-1577; gift of the Royaards family, Utrecht) · Oil on canvas · Image: "Public Domain" (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/); object metadata: CC0 1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) — Rijksmuseum Linked Art record.