Christ and the Adulteress

Mattia Preti painted this subject several times, an example of which is in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo (Mattia Preti, ed. E. Corace, Rome, 1989, fig. 81). Although he never repeated the composition, the figures depicted in this picture reccur in other paintings. The bearded man wearing a turban looking at the spectator on the left, for example, can be compared with that of the father in the Return of the Prodigual Son in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung, Schleissheim (catalogue of the exhibition, Seicento, le siècle de Caravage dans les collections franaises, Grand Palais, Paris, 1988-89, under no. 120, illustrated). The spectator in the background behind Christ's left shoulder is painted in a similar manner in a picture of the same subject formerly in the Cappelli Collection, San Demetrio ne'Vestini. The same collection comprised a picture of Christ and the Money-changers which depicts a nearly identical head of Christ with a contemplative gaze. The Adulteress appears in reverse in a painting by Preti of the same subject sold in these Rooms 12 December 1980, lot 3.