Bartolomé Esteban Murillo Seville 1618 - 1682

J. Luna, Seville;
Marquesa de la Vega-Inclán, Madrid;
From whom acquired by Felix Schlayer, German Ambassador to Madrid;
Probably by descent until sold ‘The Property of a Gentleman’, London, Sotheby’s, 3 December 1997, lot 55.

Possibly Munich, Heinemann, 1911, no. 465 (according to Angulo Iñiguez, see Literature).

A.L. Mayer, Josef und die Frau des Potiphar von Murillo’, in Der Cicerone, XII, Leipzig, September 1920, pp. 685-86, reproduced;
A.L. Mayer, Murillo, Munich 1921, p. 685;
A.L. Mayer, Murillo, Berlin, 1923, p. 114;
A.L. Mayer, Historia de la Pintura Española, Madrid 1928, pp. 318-19, reproduced fig. 272;
J.A. Gaya Nuño, L’Opera Completa di Murillo, Milan 1978, p. 103, no. 189;
D. Angulo Iñiguez, Murillo, Madrid 1981, vol. II, p. 104, cat. no. 93a, reproduced vol. III, plate 169, listed as in the Felix Schlayer Collection, Madrid;
J.M. Lehmann, ‘Ein umstrittenes Fruhwerk Murillos’, in Pantheon, vol. XLIV, 1986, pp. 37-43.

Paintings of Old Testament subjects are relatively rare in the oeuvre of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, the leading Baroque painter working in Seville during the 17^th century. The present work is one of only two known treatments of the subject of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife by the artist, the other (oil on canvas, 196.5 by 245.3 cm.) today in the Staatliche Museen, Kassel (see B. Schnackenburg, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Gesamtkatalog, Kassel 1996, vol. I, p. 201, no. 585, reproduced vol. II, plate 367), which was painted early within the artist’s career, around 1645-48, and is characterised by a much firmer handling, inspired by the work of the Florentine baroque painters such as Artemisia and Orazio Gentileschi.

The present work however belongs to the artist’s full maturity and is dated by Angulo Iñiguez (see Literature) and Professor Enrique Valdivieso to the 1660s. Although the overall mise-en-scène recalls Murillo’s earlier treatment of the subject, the present work is rendered with the soft handling, fluent brushwork and light palette which characterises the artist’s work from the 1650s onwards and which lends itself in the present work to the artist’s highly sensual interpretation of the scene. It is notable that this is one of very few depictions of nudes within Spanish painting of the 17^th century, for at the time the doctrine of the Counter-Reformation was uncompromisingly enforced by the representatives of the Spanish Inquisition. It would seem highly plausible therefore, taking into account the erotic overtones of the picture as well its small-scale format, that it was painted with a specific private patron in mind.

A related sketch to the present work (oil on canvas, 36 by 29 cm.), depicting the figure of Joseph, is listed by Angulo Iñiguez (op. cit., reproduced vol. I, plate 489) as in the Gómez Moreno Collection, Granada, which he describes as ‘de excelente calidad. Posiblemente de Murillo’. Known only through a black and white photograph, it is unclear whether this picture once encompassed the entire composition and has been dramatically cut down, however it seems likely that (in keeping with the artist’s normal practice) it may represent the initial oil sketch for the present work. In his article of 1986 on the present painting (see Literature) points out that the carpet depicted within the present scene is of a type produced in Granada during the 17^th century.