Scholarly Article

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: The Prophet Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath, c. 1630

Part of Online Edition: Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century
By

Publication History

Published online

In a landscape with ruins overgrown with plants, a bearded, old man greets a kneeling young woman and boy near the lower right corner in this horizontal painting. At least seven people move through the landscape beyond, and everyone has light skin and is barefoot. In the trio to the lower right, the man stands facing our right in profile. He has a steel-gray beard and hair, a prominent nose, and his mouth is closed. He wears a thistle-purple tunic under a scarlet-red cloak. He looks down at the woman, and he holds out his right hand, closer to us, toward her. In front of him, to our right, the woman kneels facing our left with her arms spread, as she looks toward the man’s extended hand. She wears a sapphire-blue dress with white sleeves, and honey-brown fabric wraps over one shoulder and around her waist. The boy next to her holds a bundle of sticks with both arms. He has dark hair and wears a brown robe over a plum-purple tunic. The landscape around them has some scrubby green growth along the dirt ground. One column holding up a crumbling entablature rises near us, up along the left edge of the composition. Plants grow over more ruins to our right, which are nestled against a rocky hill a short distance away. In the field between the ruins, a woman wearing a rose-pink robe carries a bundle balanced on her head while other men, wearing coral red, topaz blue, or golden yellow walk, through the landscape. In the distance, there are green hills, slate-blue mountains, and more ruins. The sky is pale yellow near the horizon and changes to lapis blue above, with light gray and white clouds.
Cornelis van Poelenburch, The Prophet Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath, c. 1630, oil on panel, Gift of Joseph F. McCrindle in honor of John Thomas Rowe, Jr., 2004.101.2

Entry

The Prophet Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath illustrates the passage in 1 Kings 17:8–24 that recounts how the Lord led the prophet Elijah to Zarephath, where he met a widow and her son gathering sticks. Elijah asked the widow for some water and bread, and although she was destitute because of the draught that had plagued the land for more than three years, she used her last bit of flour and oil to cook for him. Elijah then blessed her and her child and assured them that their supplies of flour and oil would never be diminished. Shortly thereafter the widow's son died, and Elijah prayed that the Lord would return the child to life. The Lord heard Elijah's prayer and returned the boy's soul to his body. This Old Testament story was often interpreted as exemplifying the power of faith to achieve miracles. It also portends New Testament accounts of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. The way the widow's son clutches a large bundle of sticks anticipates Christ’s carrying of the cross on the way to Golgotha, and because the boy was brought back from the dead, he was also seen as alluding to the resurrected Christ. Significantly, when this painting appeared at auction in Paris in 1752, it was sold as a pendant to a painting by Poelenburch of Abraham and Isaac, another Old Testament story that was considered to embody the power of faith and to prefigure Christ’s death and resurrection.

In Poelenburch’s painting the meeting of the prophet, shown wrapped in a red robe, and the widow, who kneels before him, occurs near the end of the day under cerulean blue skies. Light spreading across the parched and barren terrain illuminates their forms, as well as those of other, more distant travelers who pass through a landscape dotted with clusters of ancient ruins atop small hills or nestled against rock outcroppings. Although most of these structures are imaginary evocations of ruins Poelenburch had seen on his travels through the Roman campagna, the large shaded ruin in the foreground left, with its precariously balanced pediment, is based on the Temple of Castor and Pollux from the Roman Forum, a ruin that Poelenburch depicted often in his works. He used these ruins to establish a sense of time and place, but he also carefully situated them for compositional effect. They not only help create scale and enhance spatial recession, but they also reinforce the narrative. By framing Elijah’s upper body within the circular vault of a distant ruin, for example, Poelenburch gave the prophet added visual prominence in the scene.

Poelenburch continued to paint biblical scenes in Italianate landscapes even after he returned to Utrecht in the mid-1620s, making it difficult to date his paintings. The restrained poses and gestures of the figures in this work, which reflect the influence of Raphael, the blue and ocher tonalities, and the soft atmospheric effects in the distant landscape are all characteristic of Poelenburch’s paintings executed around 1630. The oak panel support is also typical of works he painted in Utrecht at that time. Moreover, the subject seems to have appealed to Dutch patrons. The closest pictorial prototype for Poelenburch’s interpretation of the story is a now-lost painting by Poelenburch’s teacher, Bloemaert, Abraham, known through a 1604 engraving by Saenredam, Jan Pietersz, in which the widow is similarly shown kneeling and gathering sticks with her son .

Technical Summary

The support consists of a single-planked panel with horizontal grain. On the reverse, all four edges are beveled and tool marks are visible along the left edge. A thin, white ground covers the panel, but allows the wood grain to show through. Microscopic examination showed several incised diagonal lines in the ground, which may be compositional or perspective guides. The paint is smoothly and precisely applied in fine detail.

The painting is in very good condition. A wooden insert in the panel in the top left corner was probably added to replace an area damaged by insects. Short checks and small chips in the panel are found along the edges. The paint and ground bear some groupings of small losses that follow the wood grain in the foreground figures at lower right, in the clouds, and in the center of the sky. The painting was treated in 2006 to remove discolored varnish and inpainting.

Previous Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: The Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, c. 1660
Next Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Woman Weaving a Crown of Flowers, c. 1675/1680