Lot 98: Nicola Grassi (Formea 1682-c. 1750 Venice)

Jacob with Laban's flock
oil on canvas
25 1/2 x 33 1/2 in. (65 x 85 cm.)
with inventory number '37' (lower left)

G. Fiocco, 'Nicola Grassi', in Dedalo, II, 1929-30, pp. 440-1.

Gottschewski Collection, Berlin.

This picture is the pendant to Jacob and Rachel at the Well in the Musei Civici, Udine (A. Rizzi, Nicola Grassi, Udine, 1982, pp. 130-1, illustrated; fig. 1). Both bear the same inventory number painted lower left and the present work depicts the natural continuation of Jacob's story after his meeting with and marriage to Rachel, as it is narrated in Genesis (29: 9-30; 30:28-43; 31:17-55).

Laban, who had tricked Jacob into working for him as a herdsman for another seven years in order to win the hand of Rachel, agreed to give him every striped or partly-coloured sheep and goat born in his herd, by way of wages. Jacob cunningly increased the number of such animals in the flock by putting branches from which he had stripped the bark, in the animals' drinking trough. This resulted in the sheep and goats miraculously bearing young that were striped and speckled.

Although rarely depicted, this subject was illustrated by Nicola Grassi in another pair of canvasses, painted around 1733 for the parish church of Sezza di Zuglio, not far from Tolmezzo in Friuli Venezia Giulia. The stylistic and compositional analogies that the Sezza di Zuglio pictures hold with the present painting suggest they share a similar date.

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