Tamar

Francesco Hayez painted Tamar around 1847, depicting the Old Testament figure of Tamar — the daughter-in-law of Judah who was wronged and then vindicated in the complex narrative of Genesis 38 — as an occasion for the combination of the female figure, orientalist setting, and moral narrative that characterized his later biblical subjects. His late work increasingly moved toward a warmer, more coloristically rich treatment of figure subjects drawn from the Bible and classical mythology, and Tamar belongs to this productive late phase of his career when the Venetian tradition of sensuous colorism had fully merged with the Romantic compositional drama of his mature style.

Hayez renders the biblical figure with his characteristic warm palette and careful attention to the female form. The rich coloring and the atmospheric handling of light and drapery show the influence of Venetian painting that remained central to his art.