(Milan 1599/1600–1630)
Cain and Abel,
oil on canvas, 185 x 129 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Giovanni Francesco Arese collection, Milan (?);
Private European collection

We are grateful to Filippo Maria Ferro for suggesting the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for cataloguing this lot.

Daniele Crespi is distinguished among the Lombard mannerist painters of the early Seicento (the painters of Cardinal Federigo Borromeo called the pestanti) for his ‘sentimental’ inclination, for his return to a renaissance standard and for his Emilian classicism: the present Biblical composition appears to be an admirable example of these qualities. 

The subject of Cain killing his brother Abel (Genesis 4:8) inspired many masters working in the period between Caravaggism and classicism. Artists were on the one hand stimulated by the dramatic violence of the subject, and on the other by reclaiming the notion of rendering a studied and calibrated exercise in drawing. In Lombardy, the creation of the Accademia Ambrosiana catalysed an emphasis on the grandeur of the subject. It was handled by both the Procaccini, first by Camillo and then in a dynamically sculptural manner by Giulio Cesare in two paintings, respectively from 1620 (Arcivescovado, Milan) and 1623 (Albertina, Turin). Giuseppe Vermiglio made a fine version of the subject, which is now in the Koelliker collection, and which reveals a great stylistic sensitivity to both the Caravaggist approach and the demand for conservatism. However, the most measured interpretation, which encompasses the emotive dynamism of the tragic event and renders it with impeccable formal values, is none other than that painted by Daniele Crespi in 1620. 

A work with the same subject is recorded in the late seventeenth-century collection of Giovanni Francesco Arese, and it is faithfully described in the relevant inventory at number 35: “Tela per il longo con Caino che uccide Abele; figure al naturale. sono singolari le postature di questi due nudi, dove l’anatomica spiegazione del corpo del primo fa mostra dell’odiosità, ed intenzione dell’atroce misfatto che sembra imminente dalle braccia alzate stringenti una gruppata mazza di legno in atto di vederla precipitante sul capo del fratello atterrato senza potersi sviluppare, lo che rende funesto lo spettacolo. B. 3 x B. 2 o. 3” [‘A tall canvas with Cain killing Abel; life-size figures: the pose of the two nudes is singular wherein the anatomical description of the former’s body describes his odiousness and the atrocious intentions of his misdeed that appears imminent as his raised arm clasping a knotted wooden club is seemingly ready to fall on his brother’s body, beaten to the ground and unable to move, rendering the spectacle dreadful. B. 3 x B. 2 o. 3’] (see F. Arese, Una quadreria milanese della fine del Seicento, in: Arte Lombarda, 1967, XII, 1, p. 132, cat. 35; N. W. Neilson, Daniele Crespi, Soncino 1996, p. 74, with wrong dimensions).

A version sold at Finarte Milan (sale 994, 21 November 1996, lot 65) and then at Sotheby’s (New York, 26 January 2006, lot 46, 184 x 126 cm) was attributed by Alessandro Morandotti to a follower of Daniele Crespi (see A. Morandotti in: Dipinti lombardi del Seicento. Collezione Koelliker, Milan 2004, pp. 65-69). It was promoted as an autograph work by Nancy Ward Nielson who gave her opinion after its cleaning (see Sotheby´s 26 January 2006, lot 46).

Filippo Maria Ferro has suggested that the present painting could be the one in the collection of Giovanni Francesco Arese on account of its notably high quality of execution characterised with its stylistic rendering and the broad range of emotive expressions.