Christ disputing with the doctors

We are grateful to Giuseppe Scavizzi for endorsing the attribution to Giordano on the basis of photographs and for proposing a date shortly after 1655. Scavizzi intends to publish this painting in a forthcoming article on Giordano's treatments of Christ disputing with the doctors. Giordano depicts this subject at least five other occasions (see O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, Naples, 1992, no. A61-64, and A177). The present picture is one of a number of the artist's treatments of the subject, quite possibly the earliest.

According to Giordano's biographers, the artist spent six months in Venice in 1665–66, and would probably have been exposed to earlier sixteenth century Venetian examples of Christ disputing with the doctors by artists like Jacopo Tintoretto and Paris Bordone. This subject found particular popularity in the Veneto.