Service running the other way

Almost every angelic office in this catalogue is something done for a human being. The Genesis visitation reverses it: three visitors arrive and the man serves them. Eight of the 224 titles here name Abraham, and several turn on that episode, which the tradition has always treated as the hospitality scene rather than as an apparition. The angels are guests, and guests outrank their host at the table without needing a caption.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1646 and gives Rembrandt, a Dutch painter, with Baroque as the style term. The recorded dimensions are 16 x 21 cm. The measured colour family is brown. The location on record is Aurora Art Fund, Bucharest, Hungary.

Very small, and a location worth reporting exactly

The recorded dimensions make this one of the smallest entries in the whole catalogue — a panel the size of a page. The record gives the location as the Aurora Art Fund, Bucharest, and also gives a country that does not match that city; the entry reports the institution as recorded and flags the discrepancy rather than silently correcting it. This painter has four works among the 224.