The Three Angels Visiting Abraham, from The Story of Abraham 1500 - 1550

Georg Pencz made this engraving of ‘The Three Angels Visiting Abraham’ in the mid-16th century. It illustrates a story from the Book of Genesis, in which God sends three angels to Abraham to tell him that his wife Sarah will bear a child. In this tiny print, the artist transforms the biblical tale into a contemporary domestic scene in the artist's native Germany. We see Abraham ushering the divine visitors to a table laden with food. Sarah peers out from the doorway of a gothic-style house. Pencz’s Abraham seems both awed and unfazed by his guests. The cultural context of the Protestant Reformation may be relevant here: it was a time of intense debate about religious images. Pencz’s translation of scripture into the everyday underlines a central tenet of Protestantism: that believers can communicate directly with God without mediation from the church. Art historians use a wide range of resources to understand works like this; the Bible, Reformation theology, and the history of printmaking. The meaning of art emerges from its time.