06 works, Today, December 9th, is Hannah's day, her story, illustrated #342

Unknown artist

Saint Hannah, Mother of the Prophet Samuel
I have no further description, at this time

Hannah is one of the wives of Elkanah, mentioned in the First Book of Samuel. According to the Hebrew Bible she was the mother of Samuel.

Unknown iconographer

Icon of the prophet Samuel from the 17th century

Tempera on wood

Collection of the Donetsk regional art museum, Ukraine

Master of the Feathery Clouds/Meester van de Vederwolken

Elkanah and his two wives returning to Ramah, circa 1467

Illustration of the manuscript Den Haag, KB, 78 D 39

Master of the Feather Clouds is the emergency name of a 15th-century book illuminator so named by Hoogewerff in 1936.  Byvanck named him a year later the “Master of the London Passional” after the manuscript kept in the British Library in London. According to some researchers he is of Flemish descent while others see in him as a Northern Netherlands miniaturist who also worked in the Southern Netherlands. 

He was active in Ghent between 1450 and 1460 and contributed to a Book of Hours for St. Peter's Abbey , which is now kept in the University Library of Amsterdam. After that he would have settled in Utrecht to take part in a number of important assignments.

The characters this master drew have round heads that are often disproportionately large. He painted characteristic faces with thick, heavy eyelids. His figures are stocky with angular limbs and hands. The pupils of the eyes are large and often off the center of the eye.

The landscapes he painted were simple, with an intensely blue sky in which small parallel cirrus clouds float, the feather clouds from which he takes his emergency name. The figures were often placed in the foreground and he tried to suggest space by placing overlapping hills in the landscape with a river or a winding road in between. He often placed stylized trees on either side of the scene. His knowledge of perspective is poor. 

In the interior scenes he created space with a receding tiled floor, but he often failed to correctly frame the other elements of the interior there. More on Master of the Feather Clouds

In the biblical narrative, Hannah is one of two wives of Elkanah. The other, Peninnah, had given birth to Elkanah's children, but Hannah remained childless. Nevertheless, Elkanah preferred Hannah. Hannah is the primary wife, yet Peninnah has succeeded in bearing children. Hannah's status as primary wife and her barrenness recall Sarah and Rebecca in Genesis 17 and Genesis 25 respectively. Elkanah took Peninnah as a second wife because of Hannah's barrenness.

Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld

Hannah's prayer, c. 1860

Woodcut

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (26 March 1794 – 24 May 1872) was a German painter, chiefly of Biblical subjects. As a young man he associated with the painters of the Nazarene movement who revived the florid Renaissance style in religious art. He is remembered for his extensive Picture Bible, and his designs for stained glass windows in cathedrals.

Schnorr was born in Leipzig, the son of a draughtsman, engraver and painter, from whom he received his initial artistic education, his earliest known works being copies of the Neoclassical drawings of John Flaxman. In 1811 he entered the Vienna Academy. He then moved to Rome in 1815.

At the beginning of his time in Rome, Schnorr was particularly influenced by his close study of fifteenth-century Italian painting, especially the works of Fra Angelico. Soon however, he abandoned this refined simplicity, and began to look towards more elaborate High Renaissance models.

The second period of Schnorr's artistic output began in 1825, when he left Rome, settled in Munich, entered the service of Ludwig I of Bavaria, and transplanted to Germany the art of wall-painting which he had learned in Italy.

In 1846 Schnorr moved to Dresden to become a professor at the academy there. The next year he was appointed director of the Gemäldegalerie. More on Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

Every year, Elkanah would offer a sacrifice at the Shiloh sanctuary, and give Penninah and her children a portion but he gave Hannah a double portion "because he loved her, and the LORD had closed her womb". One day Hannah went up to the temple, and prayed with great weeping, while Eli the High Priest was sitting on a chair near the doorpost. In her prayer, she asked God for a son and in return she vowed to give the son back to God for the service of God. 

Willem Drost, (1633–1659)

Anna the Prophetess and a Child, c. 1650s

Oil on canvas

Height: 117 cm (46 in); Width: 89 cm (35 in)

Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Willem Drost (baptized 19 April 1633 – buried 25 February 1659) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and printmaker of history paintings and portraits who died young, at the age of 25. He is a mysterious figure, closely associated with Rembrandt, with very few paintings attributable to him.

He was presumably born in Amsterdam, in what was then known as the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Around 1650 he became a student of Rembrandt, eventually developing a close working relationship, painting history scenes, biblical compositions, symbolic studies of a solitary figure, as well as portraits. As a student, his 1654 painting titled Bathsheba was inspired by Rembrandt's painting done in the same year on the same subject and given the same title, though their treatments are rather different; both Drost’s and Rembrandt’s paintings are in the Louvre in Paris.

He was in Amsterdam until 1655 and then travelled to Italy. He influenced the painter Adolf Boy. Sometime in the mid-1650s, the young artist went to Rome, where he collaborated with the German artist Johann Carl Loth on a lost series of the Four Evangelists in Venice. He died in the latter city in 1659. More on Willem Drost

Eli thought she was drunk and questioned her. When she explained herself, he blessed her and sent her home. Hannah conceived and bore a son, and named him Samuel. She raised him until he was weaned and brought him to the temple along with a sacrifice.

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, (1621–1674)

Hannah presenting her son Samuel to the priest Eli, circa 1665

Oil on panel

Height: 117 cm (46 in); Width: 143 cm (56.2 in)

Louvre Museum

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (19 August 1621 – 29 September 1674), was a Dutch Golden Age painter and a favourite student of Rembrandt. He was also an etcher, an amateur poet, a collector and an adviser on art.

A fellow pupil to Ferdinand Bol, Nicolaes Maes and Govert Flinck, he was regarded as inferior to them in skill and experience; he soon assumed Rembrandt's manner with such success that his pictures were confused with those of his master.

It is difficult to form an exact judgment of Eeckhout's qualities at the outset of his career. His earliest pieces are probably those in which he more faithfully reproduced Rembrandt's peculiarities. Exclusively his is a tinge of green in shadows marring the harmony of the work, a gaudiness of jarring tints, uniform surface and a touch more quick than subtle.

Eeckhout, unmarried, was also appreciated as art connoisseur, and dealing with poets and scientists. At the end of his life he was living with his sister-in-law, a widow, on Herengracht, at a very prestigious part of the canal. He died in Amsterdam. More on Gerbrand van den Eeckhout

Eli announced another blessing on Hannah, and she conceived 3 more sons and 2 daughters, making six in total. More on Hannah 

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