Landscape with Hagar and the Angel

Genesis sends Hagar into the wilderness twice. The second time, Abraham turns her out with her young son Ishmael. Poussin chose the first. Hagar, an Egyptian servant pregnant by Abraham and harried by his jealous wife Sarah, runs away alone, and an angel finds her by a spring on the road to Shur and tells her to go back. Poussin painted it in Rome in the early 1660s, the same years he spent on his four Seasons, where Adam and Eve, Ruth and the Flood shrink inside great landscapes. Here too the land is in charge, wild and dark under heavy clouds, and Hagar is a small figure low on the left, almost stepping out of the picture. The angel is the one bright note, lit by the sun as he calls her back.