Meeting of Rebecca and Isaac: Study for Vesper (Evening),

ca. 1750

Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner, trained as a glass painter in Salzburg, traveled through Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia before settling in Augsburg, where he became a successful painter of altarpieces and soaring ceiling frescoes. Baumgartner also produced elaborate designs such as this one for the engraving industry, which flourished in Augsburg before the advent of commercial lithography in the 1790s. This large sheet is preparatory for one of four engravings representing the times of the day that Baumgartner designed for the firm of Joseph Sebastian and Johann Baptist Klauber, who produced a wide array of devotional images for a Catholic clientele. Since the Renaissance, decorative cycles of the four seasons, elements, and times of the day usually consisted of mythological allegories, genre scenes, and landscapes. Baumgartner’s innovative merging of Rococo ornament with religious narrative is exemplified in this pastoral setting of the Old Testament scene (Genesis 24) in which Abraham’s son Isaac, meditating in the fields in the evening, encounters his future bride Rebecca riding at the head of a camel train and accompanied by Eliezer, Isaac’s servant. A setting sun is visible behind an Italianate ruin in the distance, signifying the time of day. The four smaller religious tableaux and genre scenes inhabit the ornamental cartouche of asymmetrical sweeps, broken curves, and organic shell shapes, which enliven and almost overwhelm the devotional content with their sensual exuberance.