I give guided tours of the exhibition Rembrandt & contemporaries in the Hermitage. With a group of Amsterdam students of about fourteen years old I stand in front of a painting by Carel Fabritius: Hagar and the Angel. Abraham has sent his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael into the desert and they are about to die of thirst. Fortunately, an angel arrives just in time and points Hagar to a well. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?” I ask the group. A girl replies: “I think that woman is in a lot of shit.”
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A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 25, 2023.