Luca Giordano, called Fa Presto

Sent to Spain with a Marriage Feast at Cana, also by Luca Giordano, by José Fernandez de Miranda Ponce y Saavedra (1709-1783), Marqués de Valdecarzana, 1st Duque de Losada and Grande de España by 1780, and subsequently offered as a gift to Barbara di Braganza, Queen of Spain, who, according to tradition, commissioned the famous castrato Farinelli to buy them for her.  As the pictures are not recorded as ever having reached the Royal Collection, it is believed she gave them to Farinelli as a gift;
With Don Manuel Riviera, Madrid, 1816, by whom sold, together with the Marriage Feast at Cana, to a European collector for 18,000 reales;
Thence by descent until sold ("Property from a European Collection"), London, Christie's, 4 July 1997, lot 96, where acquired by the present owner.

G. Scavizzi, in O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano - Nuove ricerche e inediti, Naples 2003, p. 57, cat. no. A0107, reproduced p. 171.

Giordano painted five versions of this subject; the other four being in private collection, Milan (see Scavizzi, under Literature, cat. no. A07, pp. 27-8, reproduced p. 34); the Escorial, Monastero (see O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano - L'opera completa, Naples 1992, cat. no. A650, reproduced p. 823, fig. 847); Santa Marca collection, Madrid (op. cit., cat. no. A351, p. 310, reproduced p. 652) and Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich (ibid., p. 312, cat. no. A368.a, reproduced p. 662). The Munich version bears the closest compositional resemblance to the present work, with the figure of Christ in an almost identical pose; rather than lying down, however, Lazarus is rising upwards off one knee. In the Milan version Christ raises his left arm rather than his right and is facing to the left, whereas in both the Madrid and Escorial versions he faces to the right with his right arm raised.

Scavizzi (op. cit., 2003, p. 57, cat. no. A0107, reproduced p. 171) notes that the narrative richness of the composition, set off by a dramatic effect of light and an unusual array of facial expression and gesture, demonstrates Giordano being influenced by a work by Rubens of the same subject (now destroyed but formerly in the Museum in Berlin). Giordano would have certainly known this work through a print by Boetius Bolswert (op. cit., reproduced p. 19, fig. 20). The different compositional format apart, there are several similarities between the two works: namely, the figures atop the wooded hill, grouped together in the centre of the print, which recur in the top left corner of the present painting; the frantic crowd; the old man in the voluminous cloak who enters the composition from the left; the crouching Magdalene turning back towards Christ; and the all-powerful gesture of Christ himself and the classical drapery of his clothes. Giordano was thus clearly struck and influenced by Bolswert’s print, an influence illustrated in both his imitation of certain compositional aspects and Rubens’ realism of character. Stylistically, the present work is extremely illustrative of the effect that Venice had on Giordano, where he stayed for six months in 1665. As the present picture shows when compared with his earlier Milan version of 1653, Giordano drew more and more on the ideas of the 16th-century Venetians, initiating a new sense of light and luminosity, of drama and movement.

The present work was unpublished and unknown until its appearance at auction in 1997. It has since been included in Ferrari and Scavizzi's addenda to their 1992 monograph on Luca Giordano. At the time of the 1997 sale Prof. Giuseppe Scavizzi considered the painting to be an autograph work by Giordano, datable to circa 1675.