Jacob wrestling the Angel

Name: LUCA GIORDANO (NAPLES 1634-1705)
Brand: Jacob wrestling the Angel
Price: 60000.00 USD
Availability: SoldOut

Price Realised USD 75,600

Estimate

USD 70,000 - USD 100,000

Closed: 7 Oct 2022

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LUCA GIORDANO (NAPLES 1634-1705)

Jacob wrestling the Angel

Price Realised USD 75,600

Closed: 7 Oct 2022

Price Realised USD 75,600

Closed: 7 Oct 2022

Details Lot Essay Related Articles More from

LUCA GIORDANO (NAPLES 1634-1705)
Jacob wrestling the Angel
oil on canvas
40¹⁄₂ x 39¹⁄₈ in. (102.5 x 99.3 cm.)

with Eric Tarquin, Paris, by 2003.
with Antichità Il Cartiglio, Florence, from whom acquired in 2004 by the present owner.

D.M. Pagano in, Luca Giordano 1634-1705, Naples, 2001, p. 90, under no. 15.
O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove richerche e inediti, Naples, 2003, pp. 42 and 49, no. A053, illustrated.

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Lot Essay

The subject here is taken from an episode in the book of Genesis in which Jacob wrestled throughout the night with an unknown assailant (32:24-32). Luca Giordano depicts the moment at daybreak, the sun brightening the sky at left, when Jacob's opponent revealed himself to be an angel. Jacob's face is flushed with exhaustion, his hands and forearms still tensed in the tussle but his expression is one of astonished revelation as he now sees the angel, serene and unaffected by the night's exertion.

Giordano treated this subject on another occasion in a version now in a Naples private collection (O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, , no. A052, illustrated), though the composition of the figures is reversed and the background landscape varied. At the time of the latter's exhibition in 2001, Denise Maria Pagano dated it to the end of the 1650s, citing the matured impact of Titian (). That dating was questioned later by Oreste Ferrari in 2003, however, who considered the warmer palette employed in both versions to be more indicative of Giordano's works of the mid-1660s ().