Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to Abram after his victory. Flemish, late 17th century.
On a tablet at the top of the piece is this inscription:—"Sodomâ
expugnatâ Lot capitur. Abram illum recepit. Rex Melchizedek
victori Abram offert panem et vinum." As the reader will easily
bring to mind, the subject as well as the inscription are borrowed from
the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. Supposing that Sodom, after the
overthrow by Abram's night attack of the four kings, had been retaken,
and his nephew Lot and his substance freed from the hands of the
four conquered princes, the artist has chosen that point of time in the
story, when Melchizedek, the King of Salem and the Priest of the
Most High, went out to meet Abram as he was coming from the
slaughter; and bringing forth bread and wine, blessed him.
The two principal personages occupy the centre of the foreground. Crowned as a king and wearing a costly sword, Melchizedek comes forth with outstretched right hand to welcome Abram, from whom he is separated by a highly ornamented tall vase full of wine. Behind this King of Salem one of his own serving men, who carries on his shoulders a basket full of food, is coming down the wide staircase from which his royal master has just issued, while outside a doorway, under an upper portico in the same palace, stand two men gazing on the scene below them. On the other side of the vase, Abram, holding a long staff in his right hand, is stepping forwards toward Melchizedek, whom he salutes with his lowered left hand, and behind him a second servant of Melchizedek has just set upon the ground a large hamper full of flat loaves of bread. A little higher in the piece, and somewhat to the left of this domestic, a group of soldiers are quenching their thirst gathered about an open tun of wine, which they drink out of a wide bowl; hastening towards the same spot, as if from an archway, flows a stream of other military men. Amid the far-off landscape may be seen banners flying, and beneath them all the turmoils of a battle raging at its height. To the right, the standard-bearers and some of the vanquished are seen in headlong flight.
The deep golden-grounded border is parted at bottom by classic monstrous hermæ, male and female, each wearing a pair of wings by its ears. The spaces between these grotesques are filled in with female
