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Lot Essay
This painting belongs to a small group of biblical subjects by Anton Maria Vassallo in which sacred narrative is treated with the directness of domestic genre. The subject is taken from Genesis (25:29-34): Esau, returning hungry from the hunt, sells his birthright to his younger brother Jacob in exchange for bread and a dish of lentils. Vassallo sets the episode in a dark kitchen interior, giving equal prominence to the exchange between the two brothers and to the still-life and animal details that recur throughout his work: the brazier at left, the majolica jug on the table, the shell-horn on the floor, and the dog and crouching cat in the foreground. These passages reflect the Flemish inflection of Vassallo's art, shaped by his training under the Antwerp-born Vincenzo Malò, who was active in Genoa in the 1630s and 1640s.
Camillo Manzitti first published the painting as by Luciano Borzone, already noting points of contact with Vassallo, and subsequently revised the attribution to Vassallo, a view accepted by Anna Orlando (C. Manzitti, loc. cit.; A. Orlando, op. cit., 2004, pp. 104-105, no. I.23). Orlando dated the painting to the late 1640s, shortly before Vassallo's earliest signed and dated work, the Saints Francis, Agnes of Montepulciano, Theresa and Catherine of Siena of 1648 in the Galleria di Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (ibid.). She noted that the crouching cat recurs in Vassallo's Animals in a landscape, formerly in the Corsini collection, and in the Departure of Noah in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, while the jug at left appears again in the former Corsini canvas (A. Orlando, op. cit., 1997, under no. 16, fig. 16a).
Orlando further proposed that the present painting may have formed a pendant to Vassallo's Lot and his daughters, a canvas of nearly identical dimensions and closely comparable style (ibid., p. 106, no. I.24). This suggestion is supported by a 1 May 1658 inventory of the collection of Giovanni Battista De Ferrari del fu Desiderio, which lists seven paintings by Vassallo, including a Lot with his daughters followed by a Prodigal son selling the birthright — evidently a conflation of the two biblical narratives. As the inventory gives no dimensions, the identification remains hypothetical (ibid., pp. 149 and 151, notes 3 and 4).
Camillo Manzitti first published the painting as by Luciano Borzone, already noting points of contact with Vassallo, and subsequently revised the attribution to Vassallo, a view accepted by Anna Orlando (C. Manzitti, loc. cit.; A. Orlando, op. cit., 2004, pp. 104-105, no. I.23). Orlando dated the painting to the late 1640s, shortly before Vassallo's earliest signed and dated work, the Saints Francis, Agnes of Montepulciano, Theresa and Catherine of Siena of 1648 in the Galleria di Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (ibid.). She noted that the crouching cat recurs in Vassallo's Animals in a landscape, formerly in the Corsini collection, and in the Departure of Noah in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, while the jug at left appears again in the former Corsini canvas (A. Orlando, op. cit., 1997, under no. 16, fig. 16a).
Orlando further proposed that the present painting may have formed a pendant to Vassallo's Lot and his daughters, a canvas of nearly identical dimensions and closely comparable style (ibid., p. 106, no. I.24). This suggestion is supported by a 1 May 1658 inventory of the collection of Giovanni Battista De Ferrari del fu Desiderio, which lists seven paintings by Vassallo, including a Lot with his daughters followed by a Prodigal son selling the birthright — evidently a conflation of the two biblical narratives. As the inventory gives no dimensions, the identification remains hypothetical (ibid., pp. 149 and 151, notes 3 and 4).