Judah and Tamarca. 1680–85

Arent de Gelder(Dordrecht 1645 – 1727 Dordrecht)

oil on canvas
111 x 103.1 cm
AG-100© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Judah and Tamar
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How To Cite
Manuth, Volker. "Judah and Tamar." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
New York, 2017.
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Arent de Gelder, perhaps more than any other Rembrandt pupil, shared

Comparative Figures

his master’s profound interest in the human aspect of biblical stories. Mostof De Gelder’s history paintings focus on the private interaction of a few
large-scale figures where psychological relationships rather than narrative
gestures are emphasized. Although De Gelder repeatedly portrayed thetender warmth of the holy family in his paintings, he was also fascinatedwith the human frailties of biblical characters that underlie and help explain
their actions. In this instance, he has focused on the sexual exchange
between Judah and his stepdaughter Tamar, disguised as a harlot,
bringing the viewer so close to this indecent encounter that one can almost
feel the physical intensity of their relationship.

Fig 1. Maarten van Heemskerck,
Judah and Tamar, 1532, oil oncanvas, 138 x 163 cm, formerly
Berlin, Schloss Grunewald (nowlost)

The story that inspired De Gelder’s painting occurs in chapter 38 of thebook of Genesis. There it is told how Judah, the fourth son of Jacob andLeah, married off the eldest of his three sons, Er, to Tamar. The marriage
remained childless, for “Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of
the Lord; and the Lord slew him” (Genesis 38:7). After Er’s death, hisbrother

Onan—nowboundby

theLawofLevirate

tomarryTamar—refused to procreate in his brother’s place and was likewise slain
by God (Genesis 38:9–10). After the still-childless Tamar was preventedby Judah from marrying his youngest son, Shelah, and Judah’s wife had

Fig 2. Ferdinand Bol, Judah andTamar, 1644, oil on canvas,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv.
17.3268

died, Tamar—dressed as a prostitute—seduced her unsuspecting fatherin-law. “When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a harlot; because she
had covered her face” (Genesis 38:15). As payment, Judah promised
Tamar a kid from his flock and gave her three pledges. “And he said, whatpledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, andthy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, andshe conceived by him” (Genesis 38:18). When her pregnancy wasdiscovered, Tamar was accused of harlotry and condemned, also by
Judah, to death by burning. Only when she came forth with the pledges did
Judah admit his guilt and she was spared. The offspring produced byTamar and her father-in-law were the twins Pharez and Zarah.
The special meaning to Christianity of the story of Judah and Tamar lies in
the fact that the “indecent relationship” between the two produced Pharez
who, according to Matthew 1:3 (see also Luke 3:33), was a forefather ofDavid and therefore an ancestor of Christ. Tamar thus appears in thegenealogical tree as the progenitrix of the royal house from which—inaddition to David and Solomon—Christ was born. Tamar’s significance for© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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the genealogy of Christ therefore explains her important role in patristic
literature and later biblical exegesis. For example, Tamar is equated withthe Church (ekklesia), which gave twins to Judah, son of the patriarch
Jacob. In other readings, Judah’s surrendering of his staff and signet toTamar is interpreted as a reference to Christ, who gave the Church histreasures: the seal of faith and belief in the Cross.[1] Nonetheless, pictorial
representations of the story of Judah and Tamar are rare in medieval art.[2]Even series of prints from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance that
center on representations of men who were the victims of crafty
women—and certainly Judah could count among them—do not include
this couple.[3]Of particular importance to the development of the theme in late medieval
art are two series of prints by Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574).
Each of the four etchings/engravings that comprise each set shows adifferent scene, with the depiction of the handing over of the pledges at theside of the road forming the prelude to the story.[4] As early as 1532, VanHeemskerck had portrayed this episode in what was probably the earliest
known large-format painting, which hung in Jagdschloss Grunewald in
Berlin until 1945 but subsequently disappeared (fig 1).[5] His painting
contains certain motifs that find an echo in De Gelder’s work: the proximity
to the viewer of the figures, Tamar’s seductive hand on her father-in-law’schin, and the slung legs of the couple, a motif that stresses the sexual
nature of the encounter.[6] Most of the examples produced in the Northern
Netherlands in the seventeenth century also show the meeting of Judahand Tamar on the road and the handing over of the pledges (Genesis
38:14–18).[7] These depictions, however, are mostly paintings with small
figures, usually with a luxuriant landscape in the background.[8]Surprisingly, no firmly attributed representation of the theme is known by
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), with whom De Gelder studied.[9] Before
De Gelder, the only Rembrandt pupil to treat this subject was Ferdinand
Bol (1616–80), who produced a large painting with three-quarter-length
figures in 1644 (fig 2).[10]The story of Judah and Tamar belongs, along with scenes from the bookof Esther, to the Old Testament events De Gelder most frequentlydepicted. In addition to the present work, De Gelder painted at least fiveother versions of this theme.[11] A striking feature of the painting in theLeiden Collection is the fact that, although Tamar wears a veil as© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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described in the Bible (Genesis 38:15), the veil is lifted, whereas
according to scripture it was precisely Tamar’s covered face thatprevented Judah from recognizing her. De Gelder depicted her fully veiledin the two versions in private collections and the one in the Mauritshuis.[12]In this context, it is interesting to note what contemporary theologians hadto say about the veil motif. For example, the Utrecht theologian FranciscusBurmans (Burmanus) wrote in 1668 that Tamar wore a veil only so that
she would not be recognized, because it was not whores but respectable
women who covered their faces in public out of modesty.[13]The version in the Leiden Collection differs from the other versions of thetheme in the less drastic manner of the couple’s advances. Even though anumber of motifs—Judah’s embrace of Tamar, each of them touching theother’s chin, and the phallic shape of the staff visible between Judah’slegs—clearly refer to the sexual character of the scene, here De Gelder
has depicted it with more restraint and delicacy than in his other versionsof the theme. Similarly, the two appear to differ less in age than in theversion in Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston,[14] which is dated to1681 and tones down the aspect of the “unequal lovers.” It was this very
theme of the “unequal couple” that, since the sixteenth century, had
become firmly established as a subject in literature and art, providing
opportunities for moralizing and mockery. Both stylistically and withrespect to the color scheme, which is dominated by brown, green, and red
tones, this painting can be dated to the first half of the 1680s.
-Volker Manuth© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Judah and Tamar
Page 6 of 9Endnotes
1. For the interpretation of Genesis 38 in the writings of the church fathers and other medieval
theologians, see Hans Martin von Erffa, Ikonologie der Genesis: Die christlichen Bildthemenaus dem Alten Testament und ihre Quellen (Munich and Berlin 1995), 2:438–45, esp. 442.
2. See Reiner Haussherr, “Juda und Thamar,” in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed.
Engelbert Kirschbaum (Rome, Freiburg, Basel, and Vienna, 1970), 2:443.
3. See Yvonne Bleyerveld, Hoe bedriechelijck dat die vrouwen zijn: Vrouwenlisten in debeeldende kunst in de Nederlanden circa 1350–1650 (Zutphen, 2000), 247–48.
4. For the first series of prints, see Friedrich Wilhelm Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings,Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700 , 66 vols. (Amsterdam, 1944–), 4:228, nos.
58–62; 8:229, nos. 2–4, and Kunst voor de beeldenstorm: Noordnederlandse kunst
1525–1580 (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) (Amsterdam, 1986), 260, no. 142.1–4(ill.); for the other series of prints, see Friedrich Wilhelm Hollstein, Dutch and FlemishEtchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700 , 66 vols. (Amsterdam, 1944–), 4:101,nos. 31–34; 8:246, nos. 423–26, and Kunst voor de beeldenstorm, 324, 203.1–4 (ill.).
5. Rainald Grosshans, Maerten van Heemskerck: Die Gemälde (Berlin, 1980), no. 14 (ill.).
6. See Leo Steinberg, “Michelangelo’s Florentine Pietà: The Missing Leg,” Art Bulletin 50(1968): 343–53. For the motif of the “slung leg” in different contexts, see also Leo Steinberg,“The Metaphors of Love and Birth in Michelangelo’s Pietàs,” in Studies in Erotic Art, ed.
Theodore Bowie and Cornelia V. Christenson (New York, 1970), 240–42.
7. On the iconography of the subject in Netherlandish painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, see Gina Strumwasser, “Heroes, Heroines, and Heroic Tales from the Old
Testament: An Iconographic Analysis of the Most Frequently Represented Old Testament
Subjects in Netherlandish Painting, ca. 1430–1570” (Ph.D. diss., University of California,Los Angeles, 1979), 129–31, and Volker Manuth, “Ikonographische Studien zu den
Historien des Alten Testaments bei Rembrandt und seiner frühen Amsterdamer Schule: Miteinem Katalog der biblischen Gemälde des Jan Victors” (Ph.D. diss., Freie Universität
Berlin, 1987), 101–17.
8. See, for example, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout’s painting of 1645 in the Pushkin Museum inMoscow (Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden , 6 vols.
[Landau and Pfalz, 1983–95], 2: no. 401 [ill.], and, more recently, Marina Senenko, ThePushkin Museum of Fine Arts: Collection of Dutch Paintings XVII–XIX Centuries [Moscow,2009], 142, no. 406). See also the related drawing in the Albertina in Vienna (WernerSumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School , 10 vols. [New York, 1979–92], 3: no. 610[ill.]).
9. A drawing in the collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (pen and© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Judah and Tamar
Page 7 of 9brown ink and brown washes, 130 x 155 mm, inv. no. R9; Benesch A113) with a depiction ofthe turbaned Judah sitting next to the veiled Tamar in front of trees and bushes, formerlyattributed to Rembrandt, has recently been attributed to his pupil Willem Drost (1633–59);
see Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School , 10 vols. (New York, 1979–), 3:
no. 560x (ill.).
10. See Albert Blankert, Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680): Rembrandt’s Pupil (Doornspijk, 1982),
30, 92, no. 7.
11. The other versions are: (1) Private collection, The Netherlands; see Werner Sumowski,Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden , 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz, 1983–95), 2:no.

728(ill.);

Joachim

WolfgangvonMoltke, Arent

deGelder,Dordrecht

1645–1727 (Doornspijk, 1994), no. 11. (2) Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, Mauritshuis,The Hague; see Sumowski, 2: no. 758 (ill.); Von Moltke, no. 12 (ill.). (3) The Agnes
Etherington Art Centre (from the Bader Collection), Kingston, Ontario; see Sumowski, 2: no.
729 (ill.); Von Moltke, no. 13 (ill.); and David de Witt, The Bader Collection: Dutch andFlemish Paintings (Exh. cat. Kingston, Ontario, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre)(Kingston, 2008), no. 82 (ill.). (4) Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste,Vienna; see Sumowski, 2: no. 725 (ill., as “Boas and Ruth”); Renate Trenek, Die
holländischen Gemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts in der Gemäldegalerie der Akademie derbildenden Künste in Wien (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar, 1992), no. 47 (ill., as “Judah andTamar?”); and Von Moltke, no. 2 (ill., as “Lot and His Daughters”). (5) Present whereabouts
unknown (formerly Wetzlar Collection, Amsterdam); see Sumowski, 2:1158 n. 28.
12. Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, Mauritshuis, The Hague; see Werner Sumowski,Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden , 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz, 1983–95), 2:
no.

758(ill.);

Joachim

WolfgangvonMoltke, Arent

deGelder,Dordrecht

1645–1727 (Doornspijk, 1994), no. 12 (ill.).
13. See Franciscus Burmans, De Wet ende Getuigenisse, ofte Uitlegginge ende Btragtinge vande verborgentheden ende voornaamste saken des Wets, ofte boeken Mosis (Utrecht,1668), 264; Volker Manuth in P. Schoon et al.,Arent de Gelder (1645–1727), Rembrandts
laatste leerling (Exh. cat. Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum; Cologne, Wallraf-RichartzMuseum) (Ghent, 1998), 142 nn. 5 and 6.
14. The Agnes Etherington Art Centre (from the Bader Collection), Kingston, Ontario; see
Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden , 6 vols. (Landau andPfalz, 1983–95), 2: no. 729 (ill.); Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke,Arent de Gelder, Dordrecht
1645–1727 (Doornspijk, 1994), no. 13 (ill.); and David De Witt,The Bader Collection: Dutchand Flemish Paintings (Exh. cat. Kingston, Ontario, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre)(Kingston, 2008), no. 82 (ill.).

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Judah and Tamar
Page 8 of 9ProvenancePossibly Count Santar, Lisbon, March 1909.
Conde de Magãlhaes, Palace of S. José, Lisbon, and by descent (sale, Christie’s, London, 7December 2006, no. 25 [Johnny van Haeften, London, 2006]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Exhibition History
Kansas City, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection,December 2008–December 2009 [lent by the present owner].

References
Lilienfeld, Karl. Arent de Gelder: Sein Leben und seine Kunst . The Hague, 1914, 131–32,no. 14.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden. 6 vols. Landau andPfalz, 1983–95, 5:3101, no. 2090, 3223.
Huys Janssen, Paul. The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Rembrandt’s Academy . Exh. cat. TheHague, Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder. Zwolle, 1992, 166 n. 9.
Von Moltke, Joachim Wolfgang. Arent de Gelder, Dordrecht 1645–1727 . Doornspijk, 1994,111–12, no. D3, 120, no. L11.

Technical Summary
The support, a single piece of a medium-weight, plain-weave fabric with tacking margins
removed, has been lined. A large square of red lead priming surrounded by narrrow unprimed
borders was revealed along the support reverse when the previous lining was removed. The
unprimed borders indicate the priming was applied while the support was attached to a fourmember stretcher, and the various border widths suggest that the support dimensions areunaltered along the upper edge, are trimmed slightly along the left edge, are trimmed a bit morealong the lower edge, and are trimmed an unknown amount along the right edge where no© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Judah and Tamar
Page 9 of 9border remains. There is a black stencil, two paper labels, and white chalk along the stretcher
and red lead priming along the support reverse but no wax collection seals or import stamps
along the support, lining, or stretcher reverse.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The paint has been applied withloose, fluid brushstrokes in thin, smooth, transparent glazes through the background, allowing
the underlayers to show through, and more opaquely through the two figures. Highlights havebeen applied in low impasto; areas of detail along Tamar’s proper left sleeve and along the edgeof the brocade and clasp of Judah’s cape, which has fallen to his waist, have been scratched
into glazes of wet paint with the reverse of a brush.[1]No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. The
images and pentimenti reveal minor compositional changes to the position of the back of Judah’s
proper left hand and to the fingers on both of Tamar’s hands.
The painting is unsigned and undated. A false signature that read “Rembrandt f.” was removed
during conservation treatment.
The painting was cleaned, lined, and restored in 2007 and remains in a good state ofpreservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. See Bader Collection version of this subject in which the brocade edge of Judah’s caperemains fastened with a clasp along his collar (digital image provided by Dominique Surh,curator, The Leiden Collection).

© 2017 The Leiden Collection