(Naples 1634–1705)
Jacob’s Dream,
oil on canvas, 105 x 128 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Naples
We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for confirming the attribution of the present painting after examination in the original. We are also grateful to Giuseppe Scavizzi for independently confirming the attribution on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph. Both Lattuada and Scavizzi have suggested dating the present work to the early 1650s.

The present painting represents the celebrated Biblical episode narrated in the Book of Genesis (XXVIII, 12-17) when Jacob, fleeing his brother Esau, falls asleep in the open and dreams of a ladder climbed by angels up to Heaven, which opens up revealing to him a vision of the Lord, who addresses him in prophetic tones. In the present painting, the future patriarch of the Hebrew nation is represented as a youth, his muscular body leaning against a rock. He is seen from a low viewpoint in the near foreground, while beyond him there is an undefined landscape, which is dominated by the sky, illuminated by divine light.

The present, unpublished, canvas is an addition to the corpus of work by Luca Giordano, one of the greatest exponents of the Neapolitan Baroque. Indeed, this work is comparable to another by the same artist, of octagonal form, representing the Death of Saint Alessio which, with a provenance from the D’Avalos collection, is now preserved in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (103 x 101 cm; see: O. Ferrari, G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano. L’opera completa, Naples 1992, vol. I, p. 277, no. A168, vol. II, p. 552, fig. 246).

Although adapted to different subjects, the iconography of the two works is very similar: in the Neapolitan painting the saint is also shown as a youth, his torso uncovered. He is positioned in the left foreground, the mirror image of the present painting. The Capodimonte painting, with its strong Venetian traits, is datable towards the end of the sixth decade of the seventeenth century, when Giordano opened up to a warmer, more luminous palette, following the example of Titian, while the present Dream of Jacob is likely to be from a more precocious moment in the Neapolitan artist’s career, during the early 1650s. The vigorous definition of forms and volumes and of chiaroscuro contrasts, which are still evident here, reveal the influence of naturalistic models by Jusepe de Ribera, in whose Neapolitan studio the young Giordano likely gained formative experience.