by Debra Miller

One of Jan Victors' finest works, representing the Old Testament subject of Ruth and Naomi (fig. 1), is, at the time of writing (April 1985), on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, having recently been acquired by a private collector in New York. The signed and dated painting, executed on canvas and measuring an impressive 108.5 x 137 cm., has not been seen in public since 1967, when it last appeared on the Dutch art market.[1]

On the foreground plane the two monumental, three-quarter-length characters engage in earnest dialogue. To the left the seated, elderly Naomi looks up at Ruth, who stands beside her in profile view. The women are clad in copious drapery, colored in an unusual palette of almost indescribable earth tones that evoke the warmth of Rembrandt.[2] Naomi dons a voluminous brown dress, belted at the waist with a striped cloth of orange, brown, and gold. A gathered white underblouse and salmon-colored head-cover, with ochre fringe and lining, complete her archaizing costume. Ruth wears a similar underblouse, and her dress, in a slightly different shade of brown, is belted twice, at the waist and hips, by a solid golden-beige cloth. Her exotic headpiece mirrors the salmon and ochre tones of her mother-in-law's outfit and lends a fanciful, orientalizing accent to the scene. Immediately behind Ruth and Naomi, two solid trees with sturdy trunks and delicate foliage provide a backdrop to their conversation. A rolling autumnal landscape recedes into the left distance, punctuated by a cluster of rustic buildings and the tiny silhouetted form of a woman, who may be identified as the departing Orpah of the scriptural text.

 

Executed at mid-century, when Victors was at the height of his artistic powers, Ruth and Naomi achieves a delicate balance between the theatrical archaisms of the earlier Pre-Rembrandtists and the imposing grandeur of the later Dutch classicists. The animated gestures and serious expressions of the women's highlighted hands and faces recall the frozen histrionics of Pieter Lastman and Claes Moeyaert, who exerted a notable influence on Victors,[3] while the ponderous solidity and stateliness of the figures foreshadow the restrained stability of Jan de Bray's consummate classicism (fig. 2).[4]

 

Despite its brevity, the Book of Ruth was a popular source for pictorial representation in Victors' circle and in Dutch art in general.[5] Victors himself treated three scenes from the life of the Old Testament heroine. In addition to Ruth and Naomi, he painted Boaz Purchasing Ruth from his Kinsmen, now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt (fig. 3), and two versions of Ruth and Boaz, in Copenhagen (fig. 4) and in Richard Feigen's gallery in New York (fig. 5). Dating from the same year as Ruth and Naomi, Feigen's canvas of 1653 employs the same distinctive model for Ruth and she wears a similar wicker and cloth hat.[6]

 

Victors' specific episode of Ruth swearing her allegiance to Naomi (fig. 1) is recounted in Ruth 1.[7] The narrative tells of the relationship between Naomi of Bethlehem and her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. After the three women became widowed, Naomi determined that her daughters-in-law should return to the homes of their mothers. Orpah departed, but the steadfast Ruth refused to forsake her mother-in-law. Naomi prodded: "Behold, thy sister in law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister in law. And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee... for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God" (Ruth 1:15-16).[8]

 

In traditional Jewish exegeses, Ruth was seen as a model proselyte whose speech to Naomi represented a heartfelt declaration of her conversion to Judaism.[9] Later Christological interpretations extolled Ruth as one of the `worthy women of the Old Testament' — a born heathen who embraced the true religion and went on to become an ancestress of Christ.[10] Still other commentaries have noted the rich, underlying social themes inherent in the story of Ruth and Naomi: the encouragement of family solidarity; the glorification of the virtues of love, kindness, and loyalty; and the celebration of the continuity of the male line.[11]

    
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