Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “The Gates of Paradise” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
November 20th, 2007 by Menachem Wecker
(Image) From “The Gates of Paradise” by Lorenzo Ghiberti. “Jacob and Esau.” Image: the Met.
The Metropolitan Museum in New York is currently showing “The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece.” For more on Ghiberti, see here. For all the images, see here.
But the image above, usually called “Jacob and Esau,” is problematic.
The mainstream interpretation (e.g. the Art Institute of Chicago’s notes here) seems to be that the central figure is Isaac sending Esau out to hunt. The dogs, and the figure’s close resemblance to the Esau figure exiting the scene in the middle of the right side of the piece, supports this interpretation. But the Esau figure going off to hunt has no dogs, whereas the central one does. Further, the group of women standing in the bottom left corner don’t fit. Why would this piece celebrate Esau, rather than the righteous Jacob? Who are the women?
The four women could conveniently be Rachel, Leah, Bilha and Zilpa, Jacob’s future wives, but they don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the narrative. For that reason, I’d posit one of two interpretations:
I understand what I am up against. The figure I’m calling Jacob carries a hunting bag (the same Esau does on stage right), and the dogs seem to dictate hunting. But since Jacob fits better with the women, and since Jacob dressed up like Esau (thus the dogs and similar clothing), I still would rather see him center stage than Esau. But I may of course be all wrong, and the women are mere convention, as in say David’s Oath of the Horatii.