David og Abigael

Abigail, the wife of Nabal, throws herself from her mule and bows to the ground before David, turning the future king from his oath of vengeance with her wisdom — the Old Testament’s great scene of mediation, painted here by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (c. 1485–1533), the first great Amsterdam painter. The museum’s records date the panel to the painter’s working years, 1485–1533. Cornelisz’s figures still stand in the tradition of the Haarlem mannerists, but the rich dress, the dropped mule’s harness and the landscape behind carry the narrative clarity that would become the Dutch Golden Age’s own idiom — among his pupils and followers were Jan van Scorel and, in the next generation, Maarten van Heemskerck. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).