Pier Francesco Mola

Peter Eaton, London, from whom purchased, circa 1957

Edinburgh, The Merchants' Hall, Italian 17th Century Drawings from British Private Collections, 1972,  no. 82, reproduced p. 86;
Newcastle, 1974, no. 69, reproduced pl. XVII;
London, 1975, no. 47;
Newcastle, 1982, no. 58

Pier Francesco Mola, 1612-1666, exhib. cat., Lugano, Museo Cantonale d'Arte, 1989, pp. 179-84, under no. I.26, and p. 255, under no. III. 53;
F. Petrucci, Pier Francesco Mola, (1612-1666), Materia e colore nella pittura del '600, Rome 2012, p. 347, under no. B. 83

Laid down on a 19th century mount . Two tiny losses at the top of the tree and at the top of Rachel's head. A little scattered staining, and to the left of Laban figure some traces of ink coming through a drawing on the verso. Pen and ink strong.
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John Rowlands was the first to suggest, at the time of the Edinburgh exhibition, that this drawing is related to the painting of the same subject now in the Hermitage (fig. 1).  It would seem to be a preliminary idea, as it is in reverse and shows many differences in the arrangement of the figures and the flock.  An elaborate study for the same composition, closer to the final painted version, is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.¹  Nicholas Turner, in his entry on that drawing in the Lugano exhibition catalogue, suggested on stylistic grounds a dating of two or three years earlier than the proposed date of 1659 for the painting.  The Holland drawing therefore must be even earlier.  Turner rightly stressed the similarity of the small sketch for the figure of Jacob in the the right hand corner of the Ashmolean drawing and the same but reversed figure in the present sheet.

Most scholars have dated the painting circa 1659.  It was possibly painted for the French merchant, Monsieur Alvarese (Louis Alvarez).  The painting was surely in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the collection of M. de Vallones, where it was recorded by Mariette.  Later it was acquired by the banker Pierre Crozat (1661-1740) and passed by descent to Louis-Antoine Crozat, whose collection was acquired in 1772, through the agent Denis Diderot, by Catherine II of Russia.   

1.  See Literature: Lugano, op. cit., p. 255, no. III.53, reproduced