The Angel appears to Hagar and Ishmael

Hagar's wide-brimmed hat is a clue. For centuries Europeans believed the Romani people had come from Egypt, which is where the word gypsy comes from, and painters dressed Egyptian women from the Bible in gypsy hats. Hagar was Egyptian, the servant who bore Abraham a son, Ishmael, before she and the boy were driven out into the wilderness. Here their water has run out. Ishmael lies spent in the distance, an empty drinking vessel beside him, and an angel bursts in, pointing to the sky and promising that the boy will father a great nation. Assereto painted it in Genoa around 1640, with the figures cropped close and a narrow range of browns and reds. He had treated the same scene earlier in his career, in a painting now in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa.