Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione called Il Grechetto

Giuseppe Vallardi (L.1223);
Giuseppe Pacini (L.2011);
sale, London, Christie's, 2 July 1985, lot 67A;
sale, London, Christie's, 6 July 1987, lot 39; acquired at the sale

Gainesville, et al, 1991-93, cat. no. 21

Sold in a modern wooden gilded frame. Window mounted. The sheet has been folded vertically in half, and there is another diagonal crease in the left-hand half. Paper is also a little creased towards the left edge. There are some small holes in the upper corners, probably from where the paper has been pinned, all repaired. A small loss to the lower right corner. The oil is a little sunk, particularly in a patch in the lower centre. Overall, however, the condition is fine.
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In this scene, taken from Genesis, we see the meeting of Jacob and Rachel, who had come to water her father's sheep at the well.  Rachel, who 'was beautiful and well-favoured', sits elegantly holding her camels' reins; she watches as Jacob lifts the stone from the mouth of the well.  Another young woman, possibly her 'tender-eyed' sister Leah, accompanies Rachel, and the flock starts to crowd towards the promise of fresh water. 

This Biblical subject allows Castiglione to combine two themes that  recur throughout his work:  the Pastoral, and the Journey of the Patriarchs.  The latter was indeed so favoured by the artist that a document of 1635 describes him as the painter of the 'viaggi di Giacobbe'.¹  Only one other depiction of this exact scene is recorded, in a New York Private Collection,² but Castiglione made several versions of the related biblical episode, the Journey of Jacob.  The Royal Library at Windsor Castle houses five such sheets,³ all of which are executed in the same technique as the present drawing, with three dating from the artist's early period (circa 1634-45), and two his late (circa 1655-60).  It is to this later period that the Horvitz Jacob and Rachel at the Well has been dated, on account of the looseness and fluidity of the drawing's style and the immateriality of the figures, so different from the more solid forms of Castiglione's oil sketches of the 1640s.

No painting can be related to this scene, although there are numerous painted versions of the Journey of Jacob.  Rather than a preparatory study, the drawing must instead be seen as an independent work of art in its own right, to be compared with the oil sketches of Rubens and van Dyck, which Castiglione must have seen, and been inspired by, in his native Genoa.⁴ 

1. See Gainesville, et al., loc. cit.

2. See A. Percy, Giovanni Benedetto Castigione, Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia 1971, no. 96; also sale, London, Christie's, 13 December 1984, lot 54

3. A. Blunt, The Drawings of G.B. Castiglione & Stefano della Bella...at Windsor Castle, London 1954, p. 34, nos. 94-6 and pp. 38-9, nos. 148 and 165

4. Gainesville, et al., loc. cit.