The account of Jacob wrestling with an angel in Genesis 32 is one of the most commonly painted scenes in art history. Oddly enough, it turns out that the majority of the Western Masters were unable to distinguish “anguished struggling in the dark with an unseen foe” from “happily slow-dancing.”
German miniature, c. 1350
This is just hugging. No wrestling is taking place here at all. 0 points.
Unknown Russian painter, Jacob Wrestling With The Archangel, c. 1000
Cuddling that borders on “full-frontal piggy-back ride.” 0 points.
Rembrandt, Jacob Wrestling With The Angel, 1659
Tender, manful caressing. 1 point.
Niccoló Bambini, Jacob Wrestling With The Angel, c. 17th century
THIS IS JUST STRAIGHT UP HOLDING HANDS. THEY’RE JUST HOLDING HANDS. 0 points.
German relief, c. 1370
Worried hugging. 2 points for not looking happy.
Johann Friedrich Glocker, Jacob Wrestling With The Angel, 18th century
Slow dancing and a careful, intentional ass grab. 0 points.
Gustave Moreau, Jacob and the Angel, 1878
At least Jacob is trying to wrestle here, I think. The angel is just seductively grasping his wrist. 4 points.
Alexander Louis Leloir, Jacob Wrestling With the Angel, 1865
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. They’re clearly employing their muscles to do something a little more active than a box step. The billowing linens are a little too reminiscent of the dream ballet sequence in Singing In The Rain for me to fully sign off, though. 7 points.
Gaugin, The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel), 1888
FINALLY. THIS IS CLEARLY A PAINTING OF A MAN WRESTLING WITH AN ANGEL. For some reason there are Dutch women looking on; I’m willing to overlook that because Gaugin knows what a fight looks like. 10 points.
Tags: artwork, bible stories, inaccurate illustrations of metaphorical events, jacob wrestling with the angel, the bible
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Jacob. Otherwise, perfect and thank you.
I know! The internet typo’d this one.
I can’t stop laughing at this.
Is this from MarriedToTheSea.com? Because if so, it would be AWESOME to give them credit; they are my favorite (and often ripped-off) mom-and-pop cartoon site.
That is basically Married to the Sea http://www.marriedtothesea.com/012710
Totally is! Didn’t realize that but thank you so much for linking.
Always happy to help more people learn about MttS 🙂
I will never fail to credit from this day forth.
YES, it totally is, thank you for letting me know! I just googled “Jacob stop hitting yourself” because my brain had seen it back in the day and filed it away, but I didn’t know where it was from. Thank you and thanks to losergeek below for the credit! I would edit the original if I could.
Very funny! I love Married to the Sea.
And by the way, the picture itself is by Gustave Doré, in case anyone wants that info. He did a ton of engravings illustrating Bible scenes (and Paradise Lost, and many other books as well), so there is a lot more where that came from if you like the style…
Silently laugh-cry-snorting…
This is so lovely and on point! I just taught a bible study on Joseph (Jacob/Israel’s favorite son with the colorful cloak) last night. Turned out well. I talked about how bored and despondent Joe must have been in his job as the chief administrative slave and then chief administrative prisoner before he became chief administrative aid to the Pharaoh.
And then he helped establish the eternal false choice of humankind upon the people of Egypt: famine or despotism. The people chose despotism.
Would you mind sharing some of that here?
I always think of historical duties administering a group of people who have been thrown together being a lot like working logistics at a fire camp: there are HUGE CHUNKS of your brain that light up and start whirring delightedly, learning names and jobs and skills of people you’ve just met, throwing tasks and organization at the wall to see what sticks, spinning off to do just a thousand tiny tasks and then circling back to the center to tell people what you’ve learned and accomplished. It is weirdly rewarding.
To, um, to give it an evolutionary biology reason (sorry, yes, tautology, etc) I always assumed the brain is just really good at making the best of those situations in order to survive interacting with strange groups of people – but of course I am not a slave, and am dashing about willingly.
This is an interesting idea! I was mostly using Joseph’s experience to relate to my own (and many of the young people in the group) frustrating experience with jobs not being very challenging or suited to our particular interests. I was trying to comfort myself with the knowledge that as long as I am doing my best and giving all credit to God when I do well that there will eventually be a rewarding position for me but the more I think about it I wonder. I have no idea if Joseph enjoyed his jobs. All the bible says is that he was really good at it (because God made sure everything he did turned out well, so really was he even talented?). I am very good at administrative tasks, I can remember details and creatively figure out problems on my feet but…I don’t want to do this job much longer. So while I can appreciate the praise I get from my bosses and the satisfaction I get from doing something well, I often feel like I have to force my brain to do the same thing over and over and this process often involves a lot of procrastinating (by commenting on Toast articles maybe? Maybe.) and often feeling bad about my lackluster enthusiasm for my job. I’m glad I’m not a slave but I can’t believe God gave me a creative brain in order for me to be boring it everyday. I don’t know if this answers your question but that is most of what I talked about last night. The lesson was only 75 minutes long so we didn’t even get to the despotism part!
Hmmm. There… there aren’t really a lot of stories in the Bible about administration, are there? Lotta shepherding, fair amount of midwifery, not a lot of creative work, actually, unless you’re being a king at the same time. Hmmm.
I am sorry your job is lackluster!
The first me, age 12, and a random boy at our summer camp’s end-of-summer dance.
The second one looks like Jacob is having a very poorly-timed (or… excellently timed, depending on his preferred wrestling method) attack of diarrhea.
Oh…. oh, NO. Now I cannot unsee that.
[Cues up “I’ll Be,” by Edwin McCain.]
can we follow that up with K-Ci and JoJo’s “All My Life” in the Embarrassing Middle School Slow Dance Jamz playlist?
Embarrassing?! PLEASE.
Oh god, I had actually completely forgotten about that song. Thanks a lot. (Not really.)
oh my god, i forgot all about this song but the minute i read the title, it started playing in my head.
aahhhll be luuu huuuvs sui ciii iii iiide
Slightly off topic, but the other day I daydreamed that Mallory wrote “Two Monks Invent the DC Animated Universe” and there was much rejoicing in my brain.
but who controls DC and who controls marvel!??!?!?!?
Christians have to get their homoeroticism somewhere.
Amen
Next in this series: famous paintings of St. Sebastian.
David and Jonathan are just too vanilla
I’m with Leloir in thinking this should be as homoerotic as possible. “Oh shoot you just wrestled off my robe.”
The angel gives handjobs so good that they pop your thigh out of its socket.
Which is impressive, given the hip flexors on someone who walked from Canaan to Haran and most of the way back and also shepherded for seven years.
Also, Jacob refusing to let the angel go without receiving a blessing is totally code for orgasm denial.
They are totally swordfighting in that one.
I ship it.
I am really digging the glam angel in the Moreau painting. It looks like Jacob is doing squats and the angel is criticizing his poor form. “Ugh, what are you even doing? Your feet should be parallel. Look, I don’t have time for your stupid workout, Jacob. I have to go crimp my hair some more.”
That angel is my new style guru, for sure.
The oddly titillated women in Gauguin’s painting are Breton women.
good
So speaking of actions that are difficult to depict in art, at Bath Abbey in England, they have carvings of Jacob’s ladder. However, they realized that going up a ladder looks very much like going down a ladder. In order to show the angels going down, they turned them upside-down, which gives them the unfortunate appearance of demons descending to attack you.
NIGHTMARES FOR DAYS
NIGHTMARES FOR DECADES.
So THAT’S what Spiderwoman looks like head-on in 3D. Gotta say, the neck is particularly alarming.
Oh shit you’re right. WHY, NECK.
Go home, angel, you’re drunk.
DON’T BLINK. (Too easy? Probably too easy.)
before I read the description I assumed that top statue’s head had come off!
Not exactly on topic, but I finally registered for an account because this post reminded me of a book I read. In it, the family is reading bible stories and one of the boys particularly likes the Jacob Wrestling the Angel story because of the “thigh out of joint” part. It’s all a little hazy to me, but I’m hoping one of you Toasties might be able to help…
I dunno, in that last one it looks like the angel’s about to give him a noogie.
YES! “Noogies! Noooooogies! Say ‘uncle’! No, the other uncle. No, the OTHER other uncle!”
“The Noogies After the Sermon,” more like.
The Moreau angel is very glam. Paint a lighting bolt on his face, and he could sell out arenas.
That one looks like me and my Pilates instructor during a lesson.
To me they look like they’re dancing, like in da club, really FEELING it, you know? Damn!
I love me some good old fashioned Bible slash fic.
Discussing this on twitter, but Jack Miles’s “God: A Biography” refers heavily one school of interpretation that posits that the angel actually was Esau, and Jacob couldn’t really see his features but figured it out while they were fighting enough to coyly refer to it during their face-to-face reunion later. Which is just sort of an incredibly SIBLING HIJINX way to end the story, and also totally makes all these paintings of hugging it out and holding hands pretty much exactly perfect and so this will forever be my biblical headcanon.
I just reread the passage with that interpretation in mind and it totally makes sense! I’m guessing the reference is when Jacob says to Esau, “For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me.”
Good god I love these art posts.
I don’t know, I feel like paintings that make you think of the dream ballet sequence in Singin’ in the Rain should get, like, 10 extra bonus points.
As dream ballet sequences go (i.e. generally pretty dire) the one in Singin’ in the Rain stacks up quite well. For one thing, you get to see Cyd Charisse’s phenomenal legs. For me, she’s in a dead heat with Vera Ellen for Best Legs in Hollywood in the 50s.
I think we should also vote based on hotness of the angel: winner, Leloir.
Winner of general angel fabulousness: Moreau
Moreau: The angel models lingerie while Jacob pretends to ride a motorcycle.
Relevant to this post: two dancing cats.
Did this make anyone else think of Mortmain’s ‘Jacob Wrestling’ from ‘I capture the castle’? I still don’t understand what that book was supposed to be like or wherein lay Mortmain’s great genius, apart from his impressive indifference towards his family.
Mortmain immediately came to mind! but to be honest I Capture the Castle is the kind of book that’s always in the back of my head. When I first read it I took Mortmain’s genius for granted, but I suppose on reflection Dodie Smith was probably parodying ~literary~ writers?
Totally thought of Mortmain — I Capture the Castle is one of the touchstone books of my life. I don’t think Mortmain was a parody, though. Cassandra spends a lot of time and energy trying to understand her father’s writing — trying to understand literary modernism, essentially — and I don’t think we are meant to see her as deluded in taking him seriously.
Someone on The Toast has to write about ICTC, so all of us who love it (many Toasties, surely) can happily comment on it.
Billowing linens that aren’t even attached to anyone!
Great list. It continues into the 20th Century specifically with this strong work by Irving Kriesberg (1919-2009). It’s called “Jacobs Struggle” (1946) and it’s an expressionist painting that exemplifies the struggle of conflict both historical and personal. http://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/3644-jacob-…
You can da-ance, you can ji-ive, having the time of your life!
But what about the cow in the last one (as well as the Dutch, or Breton women)? How does the cow fit in?
Of course Gauguin got it right; he was ripping off Hokusai. http://neurophilosophy.files.wordpress.com/2010/0…
They are not Dutch! They are Breton, as Gauguin himself was (and me). Gauguin depicting Breton peasants at the time was political, since they were considered a superstitious and backwards regional minority not particularly worthy of artistic attention.
Wonderful. It made my day