Currently not on view
Israelites Crossing the Red Sea,
1594
Paintings of this Old Testament subject are relatively rare. The young Dutch Republic saw many parallels between its struggle to free itself from Spain and the Israelites of the Bible. The crossing of the Red Sea from the Book of Exodus, by which the Jews escaped from their Egyptian oppressors, was a moment of historical rupture that made possible their invention of a new collective identity. The story also prefigured the baptism of Christ and came to symbolize Christian baptism in general—a sign of God’s promise to forgive sin. For Calvinists, this story might have demonstrated the necessity of divine providence for spiritual salvation.
This painting and Meeting of Jacob and Esau share a history as far back as 1788 when they were in “a private contract sale” in England. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that they were conceived as pendants. The similarities in dimension might be explained by the fact that seventeenth-century panels were produced in standard sizes. Many of Cornelis’s paintings from about 1594 share an oblong format, which was well suited to narrative works with numerous figures. The similarity in their style—smaller panels, less exaggerated musculature of the figures, and warmer, less acidic coloring—is due to their simultaneous production and broadly describes Cornelis’s later works.
Information
1594
- Old master paintings: 1962 July 11, (London: Sotheby's, 1962)., no. 27
- Old masters and the modern environment, (Chicago?: Richard Feigen Gallery, 1972)., Cat. no. 11 (checklist added to the Chicago catalogue)
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1974", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 33, no. 1 (1974): p. 37-47., p. 44
- Anne Walter Lowenthal, "Three Dutch Mannerist paintings", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 36, no. 1 (1977): p. 12-21., p. 12-21; fig. 2
- Frima Fox Hofrichter, Haarlem: the seventeenth century: [exhibition]: The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, February 20-April 17, 1983, (New Brunswick, NJ: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 1983)., cat. no. 28; p. 72-73 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 252 (illus.)
- Peter C. Sutton, A guide to Dutch art in America (Washington, D.C.: Netherlands-American Amity Trust; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986)., fig. 359; p. 242 (illus.)
- Simon Schama, The embarrassment of riches: an interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age, (New York: Knopf, 1987)., p. 111, fig. 55
- Julie L. McGee, Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem (1562-1638): patrons, friends, and Dutch humanists, (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1991)., p. 438, fig. 45; p. 188
- P.J.J. van Thiel, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, 1562-1638: a monograph and catalogue raisonné, (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1999).
- Gil Pessach, Landscape of the Bible: sacred scenes in European master paintings, (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2000)., p. 71 (illus.); cat. no. 12; p. 70
- Frauke K. Laarmann, Het Noord-Nederlands familieportret in de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw : beeldtraditie en betekenis, (Leiden: Netherlands: [thesis/dissertation] Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2002)., p. 81 (illus.)
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Wayne E. Franits, Dutch seventeenth-century genre painting: its stylistic and thematic evolution, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
, fig. 2, 18, illus.
