Pharaoh Gives Sarah Back to Abraham

Isaac Isaacsz (signed by artist), 1640

Farao geeft Sara aan Abraham terug. De handeling vindt plaats bovenaan de trappen voor het paleis van de koning. De koning staat rechts met een tulband op het hoofd en gekleed in een lange hermelijnen mantel. Achter hem hogepriesters en soldaten. Links Abraham met een hond.

  • Artwork typepainting
  • Object numberSK-A-1191
  • Dimensionssupport: height 96.9 cm x width 129.6 cm, outer size: depth 7.5 cm (support incl. frame)
  • Physical characteristicsoil on canvas

Isaac Isaacsz

Pharaoh Gives Sarah Back to Abraham (Genesis 12:18-20)

1640

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, bottom right:Isaac Isacsen. Fecit Aº 1640

Technical notes

The plain-weave canvas support has been lined. Cusping is visible on all four sides. The light-coloured ground has been given quite a bit of texture. The structure on the right and the two figures wearing turbans behind Pharaoh have not been built up much beyond the brown dead-colouring stage.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 4 september 2002

Condition

Poor. A hole and three tears at the upper centre, upper left and upper right have been patched, but are pushed outwards. The thinly applied areas are worn, and there are numerous discoloured retouchings in the sky and architecture. The blue pigment used for Pharaoh’s mantle has discoloured. The varnish is also discoloured.

Provenance

…; acquired from the collection Werner Dahl, Düsseldorf, by Dr Abraham Bredius, for the museum, 7 July 18851RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 165, no. 399 (7 July 1885); RANH, ARS, no. 289, Kop, pp. 51-52, no. 136 (18 August 1885).

Object number: SK-A-1191

Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague

The artist

Biography

Isaac Isaacsz (Amsterdam 1598 - Amsterdam 1649)

Born in Amsterdam in 1598, Isaac Isaacsz was a son of the painter Pieter Isaacsz, from whom he received his training. Presumably returning to the north from a trip to Italy, he is recorded in Munich in 1620. In 1622, he became a member of the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp and obtained a pass permitting the tax-free importation of his paintings into Denmark. He is first recorded again in Amsterdam in 1624. In the same year, he agreed to compensate Clara Becx 200 guilders for her ‘defloratie’ and agreed to pay a further 100 guilders annually for the maintenance of the child this union brought forth. The couple were to marry three years later. Isaac Isaacsz was buried in the Westerkerk in Amsterdam on 3 July 1649.

The bulk of Isaacsz’s extant oeuvre consists of history paintings that show the influence of, and sometimes literal quotations from, Rubens’s work, as well as the influence of the so-called pre-Rembrandtists. Some portraits and genre paintings from his hand are also known. In 1635, a certain Adriaen Carman began his training with him.

Like his father before him, Isaac Isaacsz appears to have enjoyed the patronage of the Danish court. It was probably by way of his uncle who lived in Harderwijk, the historian Johan Isacius Pontanus, that the Amsterdam painter received the commission to paint a Judgement of Cambyses for Harderwijk Town Hall, which he completed in 1634,2In situ; illustrated in Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij 1980, p. 67, fig. 2. and four equestrian portraits of the Princes of Orange as well as three-quarter-length portraits of Henri IV and Gustav II Adolf in the 1640s.3Also in situ; illustrated in Kempers 1922, pp. 12, 17, 21, 24, 30.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Rombouts/Van Lerius I, 1864, pp. 587, 588, 593, 594; Bredius V, 1918, pp. 1479-84, VII, 1921, pp. 136-37; Berends 1923; Schneider in Thieme/Becker XIX, 1926, pp. 230-31; undated letter H.F. Wijnman, RKD

Entry

From the time it was donated to the Rijksmuseum by Abraham Bredius in 1885, the subject of the present painting has been identified as Abimelech, king of Gerar, returning Sarah to Abraham (Genesis 20:14). The painting more likely illustrates another, very similar story in which Pharaoh returns Sarah to Abraham (Genesis 12:18-20). In both Old Testament stories, Abraham fears that he will be murdered if it is known that the beautiful Sarah is his wife and asks her to pretend that she is his sister. While sojourning in Egypt she is taken into Pharaoh’s house, and when Abraham and Sarah are in Gerar, it is the local king who sends for her. God punished Pharaoh with plagues for taking Sarah (Genesis 12:17), while he ‘closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech’ (Genesis 20:18). In addition to restoring Sarah to Abraham, Abimelech gives him ‘sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and womenservants’ as well as a thousand pieces of silver, and entreats him to dwell in his land (Genesis 20:14-16). Pharaoh not only gives Abraham sheep, oxen and male and female servants but ‘he asses (...) and she asses, and camels’ (Genesis 12:16). Unlike Abimelech, Pharaoh does not give Abraham pieces of silver, and instead of asking him to dwell in his kingdom he ‘sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had’ (Genesis 12:20). In one of the very few depictions of Abimelech returning Sarah to Abraham, an engraving by Antonio Tempesta, the king presents Abraham with a bag of silver, and sheep and oxen are shown grazing in the background.4TIB XXXV, 1984, p. 21, no. 39. While Isaacsz’s painting does not include those elements that unequivocally allude to the Abimelech story, it does include the asses and camels from the version involving Pharaoh. Moreover, the long convoy winding its way into the mountains and the servants gathering their things for a journey in front of the palace suggest the departure of Abraham and Sarah from Egypt rather than their remaining in Gerar.

Given the very limited pictorial tradition for both subjects, there is a distinct possibility that Isaacsz would have known the above-mentioned print by Antonio Tempesta. He may well have derived the staging of his scene from this print, as both works depict the figures on broad steps before a palace with a landscape view on the left. Another engraving by Tempesta in the same series showing the dismissal of Hagar5TIB XXXV, 1984, p. 21, no. 41. is even closer to Isaacsz’s painting as far as the setting is concerned. Sarah’s costume in the present work was probably based on her dress in Tempesta’s print showing Abimelech returning Sarah to Abraham. Isaacsz’s figure types and drapery style in this painting have much in common with the work of his fellow Amsterdam artist Claes Moeyaert.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues

See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 153.

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 85, no. 717 (as Abimelech, King of Gerar, Gives Sarah Back to Abraham); 1903, p. 139, no. 1281 (as Abimelech, King of Gerar, Gives Sarah Back to Abraham); 1976, p. 295, no. A 1191 (as Abimelech, King of Gerar, Gives Sarah Back to Abraham); 2007, no. 153

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Isaac Isaacsz., Pharaoh Gives Sarah Back to Abraham (Genesis 12:18-20), 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20028123

(accessed 7 December 2025 09:55:24).

Footnotes

  • 1RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 165, no. 399 (7 July 1885); RANH, ARS, no. 289, Kop, pp. 51-52, no. 136 (18 August 1885).
  • 2In situ; illustrated in Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij 1980, p. 67, fig. 2.
  • 3Also in situ; illustrated in Kempers 1922, pp. 12, 17, 21, 24, 30.
  • 4TIB XXXV, 1984, p. 21, no. 39.
  • 5TIB XXXV, 1984, p. 21, no. 41.