The Return of Hagar

When painters took Hagar from the Book of Genesis, they usually showed her being sent away into the desert with her son. This is the earlier and much rarer episode. Hagar, the Egyptian servant, pregnant by Abraham, had run from the jealousy of his wife Sarah, and an angel found her by a spring in the wilderness and told her to go back. Cortona painted her return around 1637. Abraham, in red, receives her and seems to stand between the two women, with the angel at the left and Sarah at the door of the house. The museum sees Raphael and Annibale Carracci behind the heavy folds of the drapery, set into livelier movement. By 1713 the canvas was listed among the pictures of Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici in Florence, and it went to Vienna between 1783 and 1792, when Tuscany was ruled by Habsburg grand dukes.