Rebecca and Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert by Cogniet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 2012

The Abduction of Rebecca by a Knight Templar
1828 or later

Attributed to Léon Cogniet French


Object Details

Title: The Abduction of Rebecca by a Knight Templar

Artist: Attributed to Léon Cogniet (French, Paris 1794–1880 Paris)

Date: 1828 or later

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 12 7/8 x 15 5/8 in. (32.7 x 39.7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Whitney Collection, Promised Gift of Wheelock Whitney III, and Purchase, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McVeigh, by exchange, 2003

Accession Number: 2003.42.11


The subject is drawn from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820), in which the knight Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, together with his Saracen slave and the Jewish heroine Rebecca, escape from the burning Torquilstone Castle. This painting is a reduced variant of one completed in 1828 and exhibited at the Salon of 1831 (Wallace Collection, London). The eclectic mix of exotic types, medieval themes, and dramatic action was a mainstay of Romanticism: a later rendition of this subject by Cogniet’s contemporary Eugène Delacroix is also in the Metropolitan’s collection (03.30).

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438632