LUCA GIORDANO | Eliezer and Gershom

Acquis à Bruxelles, commerce d'art, 1972

Rennes, 2012, n°22 (notice par Nicola Spinosa) ;
Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, L'Oeil et la Passion 2, 2015, p.130, n°44, repr. (notice par Mario Epifani)

P. Rosenberg, "À propos de Luca Giordano et de la France", Ricerche sul '600 napoletano. Saggi e documenti per la Storia dell'Arte dedicato a Luca Giordano, n°10, 1991, p.250, p.260, repr. fig.134

Window mounted. Overall in good condition, and the media fresh. Sold unframed.
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This typical drawing by Luca Giordano from his Spanish period, characterized by intelligent abbreviations and geometric forms, is executed in black chalk enhanced with the subtle use of washes in luminous shades of light brown and grey.  First published by Pierre Rosenberg in 1991, it is a preparatory study for a lunette in the north transept of the church of St. Lorenzo in the Escorial (fig. 1), a vast and elaborate project which followed the completion of the artist's decoration of the 'Escalera' in the same monastery, frescoed by September 1692.  In a letter dated 29 January 1694, the king of Spain, Charles II, wrote to Alonso de Talavera, prior of the monastery, requesting that a project be undertaken to decorate the two transepts of the church. Giordano worked with enormous enthusiasm and incredible speed, beginning the vault of the north transept, representing the Passage of the Red Sea, in March of that year, and completing not only that fresco but also those in the lunettes by the end of April.  

Nicola Spinosa, in his Rennes exhibition catalogue entry for this drawing, has pointed out the existence of another study by Giordano, in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, which relates to the fresco of Achimélek and David in the south transept.¹ Spinosa observed that both drawings show the same vivacity in the definition of volumes and forms, although the Madrid study is executed solely in black chalk, and therefore lacks the luminosity that the transparent washes impart to the present sheet.

Giordano was always faithful to the grand baroque tradition, and even became increasingly expansive in his approach to the grand decorations of his late years, yet at the same time his graphic style became ever more essential and reduced, his pictorial vision expressed, as in the Adrien sheet, primarily through his inspired rendering of the fall of light.

^1. Madrid, Biblioteca National, inv. no. 7930; see O. Ferrari & G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, Naples 2000, vol. I, p. 374, no. D138, vol. II, reproduced fig. 1032