Birthright Sold
[JACOB AND ESAU.]
Large stencil-coloured engraving of Jacob and Esau in a kitchen, with hunting dogs, a scene of fields and livestock visible through the door and window. Nuremberg, heirs of J. P. Wollf, [1720?]
Engraving (plate size c. 265 x 325 mm), with a caption in four lines of German verse at the foot (‘Um einem Linsen Brey hat Esau unverschnaütet / Das Recht des Erstgebürt …’); stencil-coloured in yellow, green, orange, and blue; numbered N.27 in the lower left corner; rather soiled, creased where folded.
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Large stencil-coloured engraving of Jacob and Esau in a kitchen, with hunting dogs, a scene of fields and livestock visible through the door and window.
A very rare popular Bible print, depicting the moment in which Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of lentil porridge. The dogs and the bow on the wall point to Esau’s skill as a hunter, the parrot in the window and the sheep outside perhaps forecast the act of imitative deception that Jacob would later employ on his father Isaac, presumably the figure herding the sheep.
The Nuremberg print- and bookseller Johann Peter Wolff died in 1711. At some point in the early eighteenth century Wolff’s four sons took over the business and continued to produce prints under his name, but the exact dates of their activity are unknown. Extant examples of their work, all numbered in the lower left corner as here, are largely cityscapes, though we also trace vignettes of trades, Jewish ceremonies, a Dance of Death etc. The Popular Imagery Collection at the University of Texas includes three New Testament scenes in the same format, though likely not produced as a coherent series.