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Lot Essay
This luminous, richly-coloured painting depicts the meeting between Deborah and Barak, as told in the Old Testament (Judges IV: 4-9). Deborah, an Israelite prophetess and judge, summoned Barak and instructed him to take ten thousand men to the River Kishon, where God would deliver Sisera, commander of the Canaanite army, into his hands. Barak agreed to do so, on condition that Deborah would accompany him, and the Canaanites were defeated. Sisera managed to escape but was murdered soon after by Jael, who drove a tent peg into his skull.
Though a relatively uncommon subject in art, Solimena and his workshop treated the theme on a number of occasions, for a variety of different patrons and over a period spanning three decades. Solimena’s most famous rendition is perhaps that in the Harrach Collection at Schloss Rohrau, where it hangs as a pendant to The Departure of Rebecca (1728-31; Spinosa, op. cit., pp. 484-85, nos. 224a and b, illustrated). The Harrach painting is of slightly larger dimensions (155 x 129 cm.) and includes additional figures in the foreground. The present work has been published by Nicola Spinosa as a studio variant of the Harrach painting, but the quality of this picture points to it being largely autograph. Indeed, the painting was catalogued as being by Francesco Solimena in 1996, when it last appeared on the market and made a record auction price for the artist. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that this particular composition actually pre-dates the Harrach painting by more than a decade, and that consequently it was conceived first. Numerous workshop replicas, with different degrees of Solimena's participation, exist: the version at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, for which there exists an unpublished payment to Solimena in May 1716, provides a terminus ante quem for the design (for other workshop replicas, see Spinosa, ibid., p. 485).
Further evidence of the composition having been conceived by Solimena independently lies in the existence of an engraving by Francesco La Marra, after a lost drawing by Solimena, which reproduces the figures seen here exactly (fig. 1; see C. Romalli, in Spinosa, op. cit., II, pp. 206-7, under D87). The painting sits comfortably alongside Solimena’s works of the 1710s. The elegant, theatrical composition and the low viewpoint, with the horseman in the right foreground seen from behind and dramatically cropped to draw the viewer in, are motifs found in Solimena’s masterful Dido and Aeneas (1710; National Gallery, London). The pose of Barak is reminiscent of that adopted by Saint Paul in Solimena's Madonna of the Martyrs (c. 1705; San Pietro Martire, Naples), for which a bozzetto exists in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada, who remembers the painting from the time of its sale in 1996, and has more recently confirmed on the basis of photographs that he believes the work to be fully autograph and datable to the second decade of the eighteenth century.
Though a relatively uncommon subject in art, Solimena and his workshop treated the theme on a number of occasions, for a variety of different patrons and over a period spanning three decades. Solimena’s most famous rendition is perhaps that in the Harrach Collection at Schloss Rohrau, where it hangs as a pendant to The Departure of Rebecca (1728-31; Spinosa, op. cit., pp. 484-85, nos. 224a and b, illustrated). The Harrach painting is of slightly larger dimensions (155 x 129 cm.) and includes additional figures in the foreground. The present work has been published by Nicola Spinosa as a studio variant of the Harrach painting, but the quality of this picture points to it being largely autograph. Indeed, the painting was catalogued as being by Francesco Solimena in 1996, when it last appeared on the market and made a record auction price for the artist. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that this particular composition actually pre-dates the Harrach painting by more than a decade, and that consequently it was conceived first. Numerous workshop replicas, with different degrees of Solimena's participation, exist: the version at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, for which there exists an unpublished payment to Solimena in May 1716, provides a terminus ante quem for the design (for other workshop replicas, see Spinosa, ibid., p. 485).
Further evidence of the composition having been conceived by Solimena independently lies in the existence of an engraving by Francesco La Marra, after a lost drawing by Solimena, which reproduces the figures seen here exactly (fig. 1; see C. Romalli, in Spinosa, op. cit., II, pp. 206-7, under D87). The painting sits comfortably alongside Solimena’s works of the 1710s. The elegant, theatrical composition and the low viewpoint, with the horseman in the right foreground seen from behind and dramatically cropped to draw the viewer in, are motifs found in Solimena’s masterful Dido and Aeneas (1710; National Gallery, London). The pose of Barak is reminiscent of that adopted by Saint Paul in Solimena's Madonna of the Martyrs (c. 1705; San Pietro Martire, Naples), for which a bozzetto exists in the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada, who remembers the painting from the time of its sale in 1996, and has more recently confirmed on the basis of photographs that he believes the work to be fully autograph and datable to the second decade of the eighteenth century.