WOMEN IN THE BIBLE

                   TAMAR

Title:   engraving 

Painter:  Hans Collaert, Antwerp

Year:  late 1500s

Incident shown:  Tamar ('Bella Thamar') stands triumphant at the entrance of Enaim, on the road to Timnah. The staff and ring she holds signal that she has been successful in her mission to seduce Judah. The man and woman (Tamar and Judah) in the background of the engraving suggest that coitus has already occurred -see also the neo-Latin inscription at the bottom of the image.

Bible reference:  Genesis 38:19

General Information:  Most images of this story show Tamar and Judah together, and in fact there is a small picture of them together at the back of the main figure. This engraving is unusual in that it shows Tamar (Thamar) standing alone. She has accomplished her mission and can now await the birth of her child - or rather children, since she will bear twin sons to Judah.

Title:  Judah and Tamar

Painter:  School of Rembrandt

Year:  circa 1650-60

Incident shown:  Tamar, disguised as a prostitute, offers sex to her unsuspecting father-in-law Judah. He has been recently widowed, and shows no reluctance. 

Bible reference:  Genesis 38:15-18

General Information:  This painting has been attributed to a number of painters, including Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Aert van der Gelder. The subject of Tamar and Judah was popular among Protestant painters of the time. The Bible story's message was that people have a right to act independently to obtain justice for themselves, and it therefore made an oblique reference to the political events at that time, as the Netherlands and other newly Protestant countries tried to break away from Catholic Spain.

Title:  Judah and Tamar

Painter:  Aert de Gelder, 1645-1727

Year:  1700

Incident shown:  Tamar has covered her face so that her identity is hidden, but her clothes are disheveled, suggesting her task as a prostitute. The suggestive angle of Judah's staff  leaves no doubt as to the activity underway.

Bible reference:  Genesis 38:15-18

General Information:  Rembrandt was Aert de Gelder's teacher, and his influence is clear in this painting. Rembrandt himself did a charming drawing of Tamar and Judah sitting by the roadside apparently doing nothing more suspect than chatting. It is unusual for a painting of this period to be as robustly explicit about sex as this. 

Title:  Judah and Tamar

Painter:  Emile VERNET, 1789-1863

Year:  1840

Incident shown:  Tamar covers her face, a custom followed by prostitutes at the time, but leaves her leg and breast bare, so that Judah has no doubt of the offer she is making. They are arguing about price, and he offers his staff and seal as payment.

Bible reference:  Genesis 38:15-18

General Information:  Emile Vernet was most famous for his battle scenes - he was a young man at the time of Napoleon, and was intrigued by the glamour and horror of war. Interestingly, when he painted a scene from the Bible he chose an incident in which a type of battle is being fought - between Tamar and Judah, for her right to a child. She manages to outfox the enemy (in the form of the patriarch Judah) by using the weapons available to a woman.

'her clothing is flamboyantly red-orange, the color of sexual passion...'

Title: Tamar, Judah's Daughter-in-law 

Painter:  Marc Chagall

Year:  1960

Incident shown:  Judah approaches Tamar who stands waiting for him on the road. In Chagall's picture she is dressed in the veil of a prostitute, with only her tiny, alarmed eyes peeping out at the top. But her clothing is flamboyantly red-orange, the color of sexual passion.

Bible reference:  Genesis 38:15-18

General Information:  This lithograph was produced in the same year that Chagall designed the stained glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. The windows depict the twelve tribes of Israel, suggesting that Chagall at this time was preoccupied with Jewish biblical history, and saw the encounter between Tamar and Judah as a pivotal moment in the story of the Jewish people.