Lot 140: Rachel hiding the idols of Laban

Paolo Pagani Castello Valsolda 1655-1716 Milan
Rachel hiding the idols of Laban
oil on canvas
55 x 73 in. 139.7 x 185.4 cm.

Frölich, Vienna, 1921.
Temple Emanu-El-Beth-Sholom, Montreal, from 1955.

PROPERTY FROM THE ARON MUSEUM


Rachel hiding the Idols of Laban is an important early work by Paolo Pagani, a Lombard artist most often associated with the visual traditions of his adopted city, Venice. In this dynamic and supremely Baroque composition, an episode in the story of Jacob, the son of Rebecca and Isaac, unfolds. Genesis chapters 29-33 relates how Jacob fell in love with his cousin Rachel when he saw her watering her father's sheep at the well in Haran. Laban had two daughters, the beautiful younger sister Rachel and the older, 'rheumy eyed' Leah. Laban agreed to a marriage between Jacob and Rachel, but on one condition: that Jacob tend Laban's flock for seven years. Jacob dutifully served his time but on the wedding day Laban gave him Leah, again promising him Rachel after seven further years of servitude. Jacob worked for another seven years, all the while secretly planning to return to Canaan with both of Laban's daughters, their children, and their possessions. Pagani depicts the moment in the story when Laban, after having discovered their departure and Rachel's theft of his household idols, pursues them to the Mount of Galaad, where he accuses Jacob of having stolen them. Rachel has hidden them under her saddle, refusing to rise and saying to her father, 'Do not take it amiss, sir, that I cannot rise in your presence: the common lot of women is upon me.'

The drama of Pagani's painting begins with his choice to depict this moment in the story. Rachel sits on her saddle at the left, the swathe of red drapery slipping from her lap to reveal her body for Laban's inspection. She looks directly at him, her condition subtly indicated with the placement of her left hand and the red thread wound around her forefinger. Laban leans in towards her suggestively, his violation emphasized by the diagonal of his weapon and the commanding nature of his gesture. Pagani has arranged the composition around this V shape, the child and the figure of Leah in the background left suggesting the warmth of family life while the darkness on the right indicates the bleakness of a life lived with greed and suspicion. Rachel hiding the Idols of Laban is characteristic of Pagani's work around 1685. The boldness of the composition and the strength and breadth of the brushwork can also be seen in his Saint Jerome , c. 1685-90, in the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna.

Although Pagani was described as a painter 'dello stato Milanese' by Orlandi in 1719, most of his working life was spent in Venice. He was already in Venice by 1677 and received the most influential of his artistic training there, most likely in the studio of Pietro Liberi. In 1685 a Paolo Pagani appears in the city's Registro dei Pittori and his most important Venetian works, among them Abraham and Isaac and Hagar and Ishmael in the Palazzo Salvioni, were painted around this time. Pagani traveled to Vienna in 1690 and, by 1692, had completed a commission for the Archbishop of Liechtenstein to paint one of the residential rooms in Kromerz and a series of large frescos in the monastery at Welehrad. He returned to Castello Valsolda, his native village on the Lake of Lugano, in 1697 to paint the Assumption of the Virgin in the Chiesa San Martino. After 1701, he painted two important altarpieces for the Capuchins of Chiusa and a Martyrdom of San Liborio in San Marco in Milan. He died in Milan in 1716 and his influence can be seen in the work of his Venetian pupil, Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, the young Piazzetta, and Giula Lama. Among his most famous paintings are The Penitent Magdalen in Dresden and Roman Charity in a Genoese private collection.