(Venice 1709–1798)
Joseph and his brothers,
oil on canvas, 113 x 151 cm, framed

We are grateful to Bernard Aikema for confirming the attribution after examination of the present painting in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

We are also grateful to Enrico Lucchese for independently confirming the attribution (written communication).

The present painting is clearly influenced by the Venetian master Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, and it is characterised by its pictorial quality. The composition depicts the Old Testament episode of the Selling of Joseph by his Brothers (Gen. 37: 23–28) in an impressive, frieze-like setting. The picture’s stylistic features are also reminiscent of Domenico Maggiotto (1713–1794) who was also one of Piazzetta’s main pupils, and together with Angeli, was a painter of success in the chiaroscuro manner that is typical for Piazetta’s school of painting.

The present painting relates to a composition by Giuseppe Angeli, formerly in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and now in a private collection in Piedmont, which is slightly bigger and was first published in 1931 by Rodolfo Pallucchini as Maggiotto. Maggiotto was specialised in genre-like themes. Indeed, the scene in the lower right corner, showing the financial transaction of Joseph’s sale to the Ismaelites, is very Maggiotto-like. However, the same Pallucchini - the doyen of Venetian Settecento studies - changed his mind in 1970, attributing the picture formerly in the Metropolitan Museum to Angeli instead. This attribution for the Metropolitan painting was later maintained by Terisio Pignatti, in the catalogue of the 1983 exhibition on Piazzetta (Giambattista Piazzetta. Il suo tempo, la sua scuola, Venice, Musei Civici) and by Mariana Mollenhauer de Hanstein in her 1986 monograph on this painter, pointing to the ‘powder-like’ quality of the picture’s chromatic values, which are indeed rather typical for Angeli, and dating it to circa 1750.