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This painting depicts the Old Testament story of Eliezer, sent by Abraham to find a wife for his son, Isaac. He meets the future bride, Rebecca, at a well outside a distant village and rewards her kindness in giving him water with a gift of jewels.
Maratti was the most successful and influential painter in Rome during the second half of the 17th century. He was trained in the studio of Andrea Sacchi, whose works epitomize the classicizing tendency in late baroque painting. Like Sacchi, Maratti adhered to the classical principle of composing pictorial narratives with as few figures as possible, rendering them with grandeur and clarity.
Paolo Francesco Falconieri [1634-1704], Rome, Italy;{1}
By descent to Falconieri’s heirs, until about 1775.{2}
Cardinal Joseph Fesch [1763-1839], Palazzo Falconieri, Rome, by 1839.{3}
(Matthiesen Gallery, London);
Purchased by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, in 1988 (1988.70).
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{1} See the entry for the painting in the exhibition catalogue published by Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., Baroque III, 1620-1700: An Exhibition in aid of The National Art-Collections Fund, 13th June to 15th August 1986, Matthiesen Fine Art, in association with Stair Sainty Matthiesen New York, London 1986), cat. no. 23.
{2}See footnote 1 above.
{3} See the Getty Provenance Index Database, where the 1839 inventory of Fesch’s possessions at the Palazzo Falconieri (Archivio di Stato, Rome, Notai Capitolini, ufficio 11, not. Augusto Apolloni, anno 1839, vol. 609, f. 139v 775) lists the painting as “Quadro in tela alto piedi tre, e tre quarti, largo piedi cinque, e un quarto rappresentante Eliezer Servo di Abramo che dà le Gemme a Rebecca copia presso l'originale di Carlo Maratta Scudi Tre 3.”