The Wisdom of Solomon

The Wisdom of Solomon of 1896, in the Jewish Museum, illustrates the most famous episode from the reign of Solomon in the Book of Kings: two women dispute before the king, each claiming a living infant is hers, and Solomon orders the child cut in two, knowing that the true mother will yield the child rather than see it destroyed. The episode was used throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance as a symbol of divine wisdom operating through human judgment, and the subject had one of the longest iconographic traditions in Western art. Tissot brings to it his characteristic insistence on historical specificity — the Israelite court, the figures of the women, the infant, and the king are given the Near Eastern material reality of his project rather than the timeless classicism of the tradition.

Gouache on cardboard, the composition requires Tissot to manage the dramatic confrontation between the king, the two women, and the infant — a scene that has strong theatrical potential he was well equipped to exploit. The figure of Solomon as judge and king is given compositional authority, while the two mothers' contrasting expressions are the key dramatic element.