Rebecca and Eliezer
ca. 1638–41
Medium
Etching; fourth state of seven
Dimensions
sheet: 5 3/8 x 7 7/8 in. (13.7 x 20 cm) plate: 4 3/4 x 7 9/16 in. (12.1 x 19.2 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926
Accession Number
26.72.91
Tags
Art Historical Context
Claude Lorrain, the masterful 17th-century French artist known for his luminous, idealized landscapes, captures a serene biblical moment in *Rebecca and Eliezer* (ca. 1638–41). This etching depicts the Old Testament story from Genesis 24, where Abraham's servant Eliezer encounters Rebecca at a well in a pastoral setting, complete with human figures, a bridge, cows, and expansive vistas. Lorrain, who spent much of his career in Rome, infused his works with classical harmony and atmospheric light, blending narrative with the grandeur of nature—a hallmark of the Baroque era's classical landscape ...
About the Artist
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) · 1604–1682
Claude Gellée was born around 1600 in the village of Chamagne in the Duchy of Lorraine, from which he would take the professional name by which history knows him: Claude Lorrain. Orphaned young, he traveled south to Rome as a teenager, eventually finding his way into the Naples workshop of Goffredo Wals before apprenticing with the Roman landscapist and fresco painter Agostino Tassi around 1622. F...