Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole

This impressive, unlined, and previously unknown canvas depicts the Meeting of David and Abigail as told in the Old Testament Book of Samuel. While exiled in the wilderness of Judah, David asked the wealthy farmer Nabal, Abigail’s husband, for provisions, and Nabal refused, leading David to send his army to retaliate. Abigail took matters into her own hands and brought provisions on horseback to intercept David and pleaded with him for mercy. After the meeting, Nabal died and David interpreted it as a sign from God; he asked Abigail to marry him and she became his second wife.

As the present lot derives influence from Bolognese, Emilian, and Venetian sources, it is most probably the work of Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole, who worked primarily in Bologna but by the 1680s had a strong Venetian influence from his teacher Lorenzo Passinelli as well as from his time in Verona in the employ of Count Giusti. Dal Sole participated in the decoration of the Aeneid Gallery of the Palazzo Buonaccorsi in Macerata alongside the leading artists of his generation, contributing a canvas depicting Andromache weeping before Aeneas.

An alternative attribution to Giuseppe Carlo Pedretti has been proposed by Marco Tanzi and Michele Danieli.