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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Professor Riccardo Lattuada for the attribution, given on the basis of photographs; Professor Lattuada dates the picture to circa 1640.
Documented as working in Naples in the first half of the seventeenth century, and probably still active after 1655, the artist is likely to have been a native of Liège, as suggested by a signature on a Bacchanal in a private collection, Genoa (see I. Creazzo, 'Alcuni inediti di Niccolò de Simone e altre precisazioini sul pittore', Studi di storia del'arte in onore di Raffaello Causa, Naples, Electa Napoli, 1988, pp. 223-32).
The subject is taken from Exodus, XXXII: 1-5, during Moses' absence when receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments: 'And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us ...And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, sons, and daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings ..., and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them ..., and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.'
Documented as working in Naples in the first half of the seventeenth century, and probably still active after 1655, the artist is likely to have been a native of Liège, as suggested by a signature on a Bacchanal in a private collection, Genoa (see I. Creazzo, 'Alcuni inediti di Niccolò de Simone e altre precisazioini sul pittore', Studi di storia del'arte in onore di Raffaello Causa, Naples, Electa Napoli, 1988, pp. 223-32).
The subject is taken from Exodus, XXXII: 1-5, during Moses' absence when receiving the tablets of the Ten Commandments: 'And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us ...And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, sons, and daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings ..., and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them ..., and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.'