Rebecca Welcomed by Abraham

In a broad landscape before his tent, the patriarch Abraham welcomes Rebecca, sent from her family to become the wife of his son Isaac — a stately meeting of travellers and servants beneath a wide sky. Barent Fabritius, the elder brother of the great Carel Fabritius and a pupil of Rembrandt in the 1640s, took from the master his warm light and his feeling for biblical humanity; this large canvas of about 1650 sets the Old Testament story in the sunlit Dutch countryside with the quiet dignity of the Rembrandt school. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.