Judah and Tamar

Bol signed this at the lower left and dated it 1644, when he was in his late twenties and a few years out of Rembrandt's studio. The story is from Genesis. Tamar has been widowed by two of Judah's sons, and Judah keeps putting off his promise to marry her to the third. So she veils herself and waits by the road, and Judah, taking her for a prostitute, asks for her. With no payment to hand he leaves her a pledge, his signet ring, his staff and his bracelets, and that is the moment shown here. Months later, when Tamar is found to be pregnant and is condemned to be burned, she sends those same objects back to him, and he admits that she was more in the right than he was. The museum reads the two faces as Judah's anxious desire against Tamar's cool resolve.

The subject was not always recognised. At a London sale in 1894 the canvas was called The Marriage Contract, and when Maria Antoinette Evans of Boston first lent it to the museum in 1915, it was catalogued as Ruth and Boaz.