Photo by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maria De Witt Jesup Fund

ON THE COVER: Ishmael rests limply on his mother, Hagar, as a hovering angel points toward the well where Hagar will find life-saving water to fill her empty vessel. Depicting particular details of the Genesis 21 story of Abraham’s banishment of Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness, this painting by Benjamin West is a 19th-century example of “How Artists Picture the Bible.”