Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Religious mural in Saint-Sulpice Church, France
La Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange is a wall painting by Eugène Delacroix in the Chapelle des Saints-Anges of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, made with oil and wax applied directly to dry plaster rather than true fresco. The angel, in a purple robe with gold trim and dark wings, grips Jacob from behind; Jacob, bare-chested with a white cloth at the waist, raises his hands to clasp the angel's. Below his feet lie a spear, a shield and a quiver of arrows, and a thick-trunked oak fills the centre and upper right, with a herd and small figures, one in a red tunic, in the lower right background.
In April 1849 the City of Paris commissioned Delacroix to decorate the Chapel of the Holy Angels; he worked there mainly from 1855 to 1861, assisted by Pierre Andrieu and, in 1856, by Louis Boulanger. The walls were prepared in 1850 but had to be redone in 1854 because the ground adhered badly. The murals were unveiled on 31 July 1861, two years before the painter's death, and were classified as historical monuments in 1908.
The subject comes from Genesis 32: Jacob, about to meet his brother Esau, sends his herds ahead and wrestles a mysterious man until dawn; struck on the hip, he is renamed Israel. The 1861 inauguration card called the fight an emblem of the trials God sends to his elect.
The chapel of the Saints-Anges is the first on the right after entering Saint-Sulpice from the rue Bonaparte portal. The two side murals face each other across a narrow space, so step back toward the opposite wall to see Jacob and the angel whole. The three paintings were restored in 2015 and 2016.
The heap of clothes and weapons at Jacob's feet, including a spear, shield and quiver, was reportedly brushed in twenty minutes. Delacroix painted the scene in oil and wax directly on dry plaster, a technique that allows retouching and is not, strictly speaking, a fresco.
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