Luigi Miradori, called Genovesino

Possibly Don Álvaro de Quiñones, Governor of Cremona;

Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 18 April 2012, lot 719 (as Attributed to Genovesino);

Where acquired by Stanley Moss.

Cremona, Museo Civico “Ala Ponzone,” Genovesino: Natura e invenzione nella pittura del Seicento a Cremona, 6 October - 6 January 2018, no. 24.

B. Tanzi, in Genovesino: Natura e invenzione nella pittura del Seicento a Cremona, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2017, pp. 60, 112-113, cat. no. 24, reproduced.

Francesco Frangi was the first to attribute this painting in full to Miradori, although when it first appeared at auction, his authorship had been suggested. The subject of the Sacrifice of Isaac was treated by Miradori at least two other times. Perhaps the earliest is an upright canvas, which depicts the angel in flight above the figures of Abraham and Isaac, although as in the present example with the face of the latter turned away from the viewer (Colnaghi, London). Another version of the same size and upright format is in the collection of the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa; that composition depicts the angel approaching from the right, with Abraham covering the eyes of his son. Given the energetic handling, almost identical dimensions and palette, these two appear to date to the same moment, early in the painter’s career. The present Sacrifice, instead, is of horizontal format and more restrained and atmospheric in its presentation. Beatrice Tanzi, in her entry for the monographic exhibition in which the painting was included, suggests a dating to the first half of the 1640s. Intriguingly, there is a reference in the postmortem inventory of Don Alvaro de Quiñones, one of Miradori’s most important patrons, of a “Sacrificio di Isach” (see L. Berllingeri, Genovesino, 2007, p. 103), although there is not enough specificity in the document to identify which of the known versions if any that might refer to.