Landscape with Abraham and the Three Angels in the Valley of Mambre

A preeminent landscapist, Koch worked in the classical, idealizing vein of two seventeenth-century French artists renowned for their Italian-inspired landscapes, Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin.

After moving to Rome in 1795, Koch created a number of ambitious ink drawings--large and polished, like this one--to which he ascribed the elevated status of history paintings. In the shadow of a magnificent oak tree, three angels appear before the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, who kneels humbly. He will offer them food and rest, after which they will announce to him and his wife that they will give birth to a son.