Abraham Entertaining the Angels

Rembrandt van Rijn

National Gallery of Art

Printed with delicate lines or heavy shading on cream-white paper, two elderly men and two others with wings sit on or stand near a cloth laid with food just in front of the open, deeply shadowed doorway of a house in this vertical etching and drypoint. The men and angels take up the lower third of the composition. One angel with a beard and long hair pulled back under a band sits facing our right in profile along the left edge of the print. Next is a man with a chest-length white beard, a long headdress, and a lined face. He holds the foot of a shallow chalice in one hand and gestures to an oval tray holding objects, presumably bread, on the cloth. The next person also has a beard and wings, and the fourth, near the right edge of the print, stands next to the cloth so he is visible from the waist up. His face is also heavily lined, and he has a long white beard and a fringe of bushy hair around a balding head. One hand rests on a long-necked ewer as he stoops slightly toward the cloth. The arched doorway stands open to the left, behind the first angel and man. A person peeks around the edge of the door from deep shadows. Heavy veils drape over the head and down the sides of the face and neck, and that person holds one hand up to their chest. A child clamors onto the top surface of a low wall just outside the doorway, which presumably encloses a stoop or landing. Trees fill most of the background in the right half. The artist signed and dated the plate, barely legible in the shadows, “Rembrandt f. 1656.”