Jacob Wrestling withAngel

Jacob wrestling with the Angel is a popular theme in European art since the Renaissance. In the Book of Genesis (32:25–29) we read: Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for dawn is breaking.’ But he answered, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ Said the other, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘Jacob.’ Said he, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed’.The scene – full of dynamism, synthetic lines, geometrical shapes – depicting two men clashing with each other, was presented by Szwarc as a sequence of succeeding moments of their struggle, starting from the left. The fight is inscribed into the background divided by wide, black edges into geometrical shapes: triangles, quadrangles, and parts of a circle.RP