037

  • Jacob's Dream

  • ca. 17th century
  • Artist unknown
  • Carved ivory relief
  • 2.6 x 7.2 x .7 cm., 1-1/16 x 2-7/8 x 5/16"
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase, Augustana College Art Collection, 2000.57

Essay by Leslie Wolf, Former Fellow of Philosophy

The piece shown here is an ivory relief carving. The subject of the carving is one of the most popular stories in the Old Testament—Jacob's dream at Bethel, which is narrated in Genesis 28. The carving is quite small (it barely measures 7 cm on its longest side), but it contains a wealth of detail. The piece is unsigned but it is definitely modern, and it can be dated to the seventeenth century on the basis of stylistic features.

Seventeenth-century art was characterized by a number of styles, including Baroque, classicism, realism, and naturalism. Landscapes, portraits, and still lives were common; classical themes, which had dominated the Renaissance, continued to be popular. Religious subjects were also popular, and painters such as Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Peter Paul Rubens set biblical stories to canvas. Not all religious art produced in the seventeenth century was Baroque, and not all Baroque art was religious. However, a good deal of Baroque art was religious in content, and several features of Jacob's Dream suggest a Baroque influence. For example, the gestures of the angels exhibit a melodrama that is found in Baroque paintings such as Guercino's The Resurrection of Lazarus—the gestures of the angels, like the gestures of Christ and Lazarus in Guercino's painting, are exaggerated and striking, and they draw the viewer into the scene. Furthermore, the movement of the angels in Jacob's Dream exhibits a dynamism that can be found in Baroque paintings (web gallery 28) such as Rubens' Deposition from the Cross (Giorgi 84-89, 126-129). One scholar describes Baroque dynamism: "The new compositions were asymmetrical, with wide use of diagonals and sinuous forms that did not entangle forms, but rather freed them into the so-called open form that helped project a sense of boundless space, of a yearning for the immense" (Giorgi 126). These words can be accurately applied, I think, to the angels on Jacob's ladder. Melodrama and dynamism were not just found in Baroque painting—they were common in Baroque stucco relief, which was frequently used in Baroque architecture (Giorgi 119-20). The creator of Jacob's Dream may have been influenced by Baroque stucco relief, though we cannot know this for certain. At any rate, he certainly seems to have been influenced by Baroque art.

The story of Jacob's dream at Bethel has fascinated Jews and Christians for centuries. Several features of Jacob's Dream suggest that it was created by a Christian artist. For example, Christian writers (including St. Paul) have long referred to the Cross as a tree, and the carving represents Jacob sleeping under a large cruciform (cross-shaped) tree. The image of the tree would naturally be interpreted as a reference to the Cross in the seventeenth century, and it is difficult to imagine that the artist did not intend the viewer to interpret the piece in this way. Still, the shape and placement of the tree may be purely coincidental. Again, we cannot know for sure. What we do know is that Jacob's Dream, like the biblical story on which it is based, offers rich possibilities for interpretation.