A visual Journey into the Bible - Theartofpainting.be

The Deuteronomy Page: 32 / 334The Sacrifice of ManoahManoah offers a Sacrifice to GodCarle Van Loo (1705-1765). Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts – Paris.1721.The angel appeared a second time and also Manoah spoke to it this time. Manoah tooka kid and offered a burnt offering to God. The angel of Yahweh ascended in theflames before the eyes of Manoah and his wife and they fell with their face to theground.The woman gave birth to a son and called him Samson. The boy grew up to ahandsome and strong youth.This was the story that Carle Van Loo painted in ‘Manoah’s Sacrifice’. Carlo AndreaVan Loo was born in 1705 in a family of painters, of which he represented the thirdgeneration and that would span five. His father was a famous painter as well but hedied in 172, when Carle was only seven years old. Carle’s brother Jean-Baptiste, thentwenty-eight and already a known painter, took care of him and that meantrecognising Carle’s great and precocious talent and training the boy into becoming agreat artist. Of all the Van Loo painters, who covered two hundred years, Carle VanLoo was the most gifted.Carle Van Loo made the painting ‘Manoah offers a Sacrifice to God’ in 1721. He wasonly sixteen then and with this piece he tried for a first price at the Parisian Academyof painting and Sculpture. The painting is still in the ‘Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts’ today and an oil picture on canvas from the same year 1721, most probably astudy for his final work is in the Museum of the town of Tours in France. The paintingwe have chosen is probably the first finished and conserved major painting of VanLoo. It is marvellous what a child of sixteen could prodigiously present.The subject of Manoah’s sacrifice is not common in painting. It is also not a story thatis well known from the bible, Manoah being only the father of Samson. How asixteen-year old boy could come up with such a theme, whether he read the Bible soattentively as to be struck particularly by it, whether his brother advised him or maybea priest, remains a mystery. Carle Van Loo came from a Dutch Protestant family buthis father had left the Netherlands and had converted to Roman Catholicism in Lyon.Bible reading may have remained a custom in the Van Loo family so that Carle knewthe smaller stories and themes of the Old Testament.Manoah sacrifices an offering to Yahweh. An angel of God had visited himself andhis wife before, but neither Manoah nor his wife had recognised an angel in thevisitor. Now, in the smoke of the burnt offering to Yahweh, the angel of God showsand Manoah recognises the messenger as an emanation of god. Van Loo paintedManoah in front of the altar. The angel appears in the smoke.Carle Van Loo’s painting is eminently Baroque, even though that period was comingto an end. Carle showed Manoah with a theatrical gesture of surprise and that feelingCopyright: René Dewil Date: October 2001