(Naples 1696–1782)
Moses defending the daughters of Jethro,
oil on canvas, 72.5 x 97 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Vienna, 19th Century;
and thence by descent to present owner

Exhibited:
Caracas, Casa Segnini, Exposición de Arte Antiguo, 1941 (as Francesco Solimena, ‘Pan y los Tres Pastores’)

We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for suggesting the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph.

Lattuada has suggested that this canvas is an early work by De Mura when he was still under a strong influence of his master Francesco Solimena. The figure of Moses in the present painting is almost a mirror image of the figure of Aeneas in Solimena’s Royal Hunt of Dido and Aeneas, today conserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (inv. no. 2000.92). The figure of Jethro’s daughter standing is reminiscent of the figure of Rachel in Solimena’s Rachel and Jacob in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice (inv. no. 871). De Mura emancipated himself from Solimena’s stylistic influence later in his career, when he was already in his 30s. Stylistically the present painting displays a fully Baroque style with accentuated chiaroscuro, which is also typical of De Mura’s early period.

Francesco De Mura was first trained in the workshop of Domenico Viola. In 1708, he started to work with Francesco Solimena. In the course of his long and successful career, the artist gradually lightened his palette and developed the monumental style of his teacher into airier and more colourful compositions, corresponding to the taste of the time. He thus became one of the most important representatives of Italian Rococo. As the head of a large workshop, he influenced a number of Neapolitan artists active in the second half of the eighteenth century, including Pietro Bardellino, Fedele Fischetti and Giacinto Diana.

The composition shows an episode from the Old Testament (Exodus 2:16-22), in which Moses came upon the seven daughters of Jethro, a priest of the land of Midian. The women were harassed by a group of Midianite shepherds as they drew water from a well to water their father’s flock. Moses drove the shepherds from the well, was subsequently received into Jethro’s house, and as a reward given one of his daughters, Zipporah, as his wife.