Noah's first Sacrifice

Maarten van Heemskerck · 1559
SMK, Copenhagen

Maarten van Heemskerck of Haarlem made this careful pen drawing in 1559 as the design for a print: it is numbered 5 in a series on Noah, engraved the same year by Cornelis Cort. It has been in the Danish royal collection since 1696.

Noah’s family kneels around a tall brick altar where the animals burn in rolling flames, lifting their hands toward God, who floats on a cloud above. Far off on the water at the left stands the ark, drawn like a great domed building.

From the text

Noah came out with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives (Genesis 8:18)

“Noah built an altar to the LORD” and offered burnt offerings of clean animals and birds (Genesis 8:20)

The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma (Genesis 8:21)

The artist’s own

God shown as a bearded old man on a cloud

Muscular figures in flowing robes in the Italian manner Heemskerck learned in Rome

The ark drawn as a domed building

A tall altar of bricks

Details

On a cloud

God appears as a bearded old man with open arms.

The ark

Far off on the water, drawn like a domed building.

The altar

Animals burn in rolling flames on a tall brick altar.

Noah

A bearded old man lifts his hands toward the fire.

The family

Women and young men kneel and pray.

Signature

“Martinus Va Heemskerck inVtor” — designed by Heemskerck.

Maarten van Heemskerck, Netherlandish, 1498–1574. SMK — Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (The Royal Collection of Graphic Art, KKSgb9145) · Pen, brown ink, faint traces of black chalk on yellowish paper; traces of ruling pen · SMK Open: "SMK has chosen to waive these rights. This means that all photos of Public Domain artworks on this site are also in the Public Domain and free to use." (SMK API record: "public_domain": true, "rights": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/")

The verses

Gen 8:18–22So Noah came out, along with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. Every living creature, every creeping thing, and every bird—everything that moves upon the earth—came out of the ark, kind by kind. Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. And taking from every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall never cease.”