Three young men with wings and long robes stand together.
Bible in art · Genesis
Abraham and the Three Angels
Lucas van Leyden · c. 1513
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Lucas van Leyden engraved this plate in Leiden around 1513. Three tall figures fill almost the whole sheet, and the light falls on their robes in long, curving lines of the burin.
The three visitors stand close together, winged and barefoot. Old Abraham kneels before them in a heavy robe, his hands on his staff. Behind them there is only a rocky slope and a ruined wall.
From the text
- Abraham “looked up and saw three men standing nearby” (Genesis 18:2)
- He bowed low to the ground (Genesis 18:2)
- “please do not pass your servant by” (Genesis 18:3)
The artist’s own
- The visitors shown as winged angels, as painters of the time usually did — the text first calls them “three men”
- No tent and no oaks of Mamre — only the meeting on a rocky slope
- Abraham in a fur-collared robe of Lucas’s own day
Details
The three visitors
Abraham
An old bearded man kneels before them, his hands on his staff.
Wings
Every feather of the great wings is cut in line.
Bare feet
The visitors stand barefoot on the ground.
Lucas van Leyden, Netherlandish, c. 1489/94–1533. National Gallery of Art, Washington (Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.5610) · Engraving · NGA Open Access: "Images of these works are available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial, under Creative Commons Zero (CC0)." (NGA open data: published_images.csv openaccess = 1)