(Rome 1593 – after 1654 Naples) and (Naples circa 1606 – circa 1656)
Abraham and the Three Angels,
oil on canvas, 144.5 x 200.8 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Rome;
Private collection, L’Aquila;
sale, Artemisia Auctions, Paris, 16 June 2014, lot 44 (as Bernardo Cavallino);
Private European collection

Documentation:
possibly Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli, Banco dei Poveri. Volume di bancali matr. 1386. Partita di ducati 5 del 24 dicembre 1645 estinta il 4 gennaio 1646. 'Pagamento ad Artemisia Gentileschi per un quadro raffigurante Abramo' (see G. Guida, Alcuni artisti dei secoli XVII-XIX nelle carte dell’Archivio storico del Banco di Napoli-Fondazione, in: Istituto Banco di Napoli-Fondazione. Quaderni dell’Archivio storico, 2011–2013, Naples 2014, p. 383)

Literature:
D. de Sarno Prignano, L’incontro di Abramo con i tre angeli di Bernardo Cavallino, in: L. Muti, D. de Sarno Prignano (eds.), Capolavori in proscenio. Dipinti del Cinque, Sei e Settecento, Faenza 2006, p. 113, fig. 18, illustrated p. 130 (as ‘autograph work by Cavallino, hitherto unknown to the studies’)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 51244 (as Giuseppe Marullo).

We are grateful to Giuseppe Porzio for suggesting the attribution and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

We are also grateful to Maria Cristina Terzaghi for independently confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

The present painting belongs to Artemisia Gentileschi’s artistic production during her second Neapolitan period and is datable, according to Porzio, to around the mid-1640s. During this period the scale of Artemisia’s commercial success, as well as her considerable management skills, meant that in order to meet the demand for her work she engaged a large and well organised studio in which many young and highly skilled painters were employed. These artists included Bernardo Cavallino and predominantly Onofrio Palumbo (or more accurately, Palomba) who is recorded and documented working alongside Gentileschi (see G. Porzio, in: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, LXXX, Rome 2014, pp. 652–55).

The close collaborative studio practice which characterises Artemisia’s whole Neapolitan production sometimes leads to stylistic incongruity, despite a clearly recognisable overall style and choice of subject matter. Therefore, separating the hand of the ‘master’ from that of her assistants is a highly complex task. That is to say that even in her own age, the name of Artemisia Gentileschi must have already indicated more of a conceptual and qualitative standard, a guarantee of quality rather than the assertion of the entire painting being by the hand of the master.

In the present painting, the physical types of the angels, the pictorial calligraphy, the palette and the iridescent drapery, all recall the female figures in Lot and his daughters by Artemisia in the Nunziatura Apostolica, Madrid published by Gabriele Finaldi (see G. Finaldi, Pittura napoletana nella Nunziatura Apostolica di Madrid, in: Ricerche sull’arte a Napoli in età moderna. Saggi e documenti 2014. Scritti in onore di Giuseppe De Vito, Naples 2014, pp. 179–80, fig. 8). Likewise, the protagonist in the Samson and Delilah of Palazzo Zevallos, Naples, which after a complex history of attribution is now agreed to be by Artemisia.

Significantly, there is a record of payment made to Artemisia in December 1645 for a picture of Abraham of five by four palms - ‘uno quatro d’Abramo di palmi cinque e quattro’ [‘a picture of Abraham of five by four palms’] that remains unidentified (see G. Guida, Alcuni artisti dei secoli XVII-XIX nelle carte dell’Archivio storico del Banco di Napoli-Fondazione, in: Istituto Banco di Napoli-Fondazione. Quaderni dell’Archivio storico, 2011–2013, Naples 2014, p. 383). At present this work remains unidentified and it has been suggested that it may be the present painting, especially as stylistically this work can be dated to the 1640s.