Circle of Januarius Zick (1730-1797), Hagar and Ishmael Saved by the Angel, 18th Century German Oil on Canvas, Unframed

Hagar lies at the foot of a rock in the left foreground, in a yellow bodice and a blue skirt, one hand raised to her face and her eyes turned upward. Behind her and slightly above, an angel leans out from the rock with wings spread and one arm extended, pointing away toward the right. In the middle distance on that side, a small figure in red lies alone on the ground. That is Ishmael, set down apart from his mother, as in Genesis 21, where Hagar leaves the child under a bush and withdraws so as not to watch him die. The wilderness closes around them in dark pines and heavy foliage, opening only at the upper right onto a pale ochre sky and a distant range of hills. The palette is held to deep greens and browns, with the blue and white of the angel and of Hagar's skirt carrying the only cool notes.

Religious subjects remained central to German painting throughout the eighteenth century, particularly in the Catholic regions of southern Germany. Artists working in the Rococo tradition favoured dynamic compositions, warm palettes and strong contrasts between light and shadow for biblical narratives. The story of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert was a recurring theme, valued for its emotional intensity and for the moment of divine intervention it turns on. Painters active in this period often trained in Italy or studied the works of Tiepolo and Piazzetta, absorbing the Venetian approach to colour and movement, and the result was a distinctly German reading of the Rococo, combining Italian theatricality with Northern attention to landscape and atmosphere.

The canvas has been relined and carries an age craquelure and traces of old varnish, visible in the photographs. It is unsigned, with an attribution to Januarius Zick inscribed on the reverse, and is sold unframed.

→ What "circle of" claims, when an inscription on the back says otherwise