Luca Giordano

(Napoli, 1634 - 1705)

Oil on canvas

cm. 80x103. Framed

The painting is accompanied by an expertise by Prof. Nicola Spinosa.

This previously unpublished painting depicts a biblical subject traditionally interpreted as an allegory of lust and the corruption of power. As observed by Nicola Spinosa, the composition reflects the influence of Peter Paul Rubens’s celebrated version formerly in the Neapolitan collection of Gaspar Roomer, known in Naples from the 1640s and crucial to Luca Giordano’s shift toward a Neo-Venetian idiom around 1660. The canvas belongs to the group of works datable between the late 1650s and early 1660s documenting this phase, while adopting iconographic solutions independent of the Rubens model. It is recognized as an autograph replica of the version in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, painted as a pendant to the Wedding at Cana. Both versions may be dated between 1659 and 1663–64.