Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert

Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert is an oil painting by the Italian Rococo painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. It is dated around 1732 and measures 140 centimeters high by 120 cm wide. It is preserved in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, Italy.

Tiepolo deals here with a subject of the Old Testament. According to the book of Genesis, although God promised Abraham to be the father of nations, Sarah was barren. To help her husband fulfill his destiny, she offered her slave Hagar as a concubine. Hagar became immediately pregnant and began to despise her mistress. Sara bitterly complained to her husband, and he told her to do with her maid whatever she wanted. Sarah's harsh treatment of Hagar forced her to flee into the wilderness with her son Ishmael, where she found an angel who announced that her children would be numerous and urged her to return to her mistress.

After this episode, Sarah conceives Isaac, and after isaac is born, as recounted in Genesis chapter 21:8 et seq., Hagar and her son Ishmael were cast out of Abraham's house. Hagar and Ishmael wandered through the desert of Beersheba, where they ran out of water. As the child wept, an angel appeared who

The subject had previously been treated by Claudio Lorena, emphasizing the desert landscape.

In Tiepolo's painting all the tension is focused on the characters and their looks. Hagar appears, holding her son Ishmael, dehydrated, and staring pleadingly at the angel who appears to them. The angel takes pity on the child and points them to the way of the source.

All the destitution and helplessness of the painting are manifested through the painful and pleading expression of the mother, who has a gesture of suffering and a posture reminiscent of those of a Virgin in a Pietà.