Guercino (1591-1666)
Abramo ripudia Agar e Ismaele (Abraham casting out Hagar and Ishmael)
1657
Oil on canvas, 115 x 154 cm
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano
Guercino sets the story of Abraham, aged 100, casting out the slave Hagar and their son Ishmael to comply with his first wife Sarah’s demands on a stage conjuring up the world of melodrama which also inspires the figures’rhetorical gestures. Formerly in the Sampieri collection along with other masterpieces of Bolognese painting now in the Brera, this painting was commissioned from Guercino by the Cento Community in 1657 as a gift fot Lorenzo Imperiali, the cardinal legate of Ferrara. (Brera)