Rebecca at the Well
Francesco Paceco de Rosa (Naples 1607 - Naples 1656)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1627 - 1656
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1245 x 1750 mm (49 x 69 in)
Place of origin
Naples
Order this imageCollection
Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd
NT 1421747
Caption
The scene shows Rebecca offering a large moulded ewer to the kneeling Eliezer and six others. It depicts to a biblical episode in the Old Testament, Genesis (24), when Eliezer has been sent to Mesopotamia by his master, Abraham, to find a wife for his son, Isaac, and when he arrived in Nahor in Chaldea he prayed that whoever gave him and his camels water would be an eligible woman. The dog in the picture is an Helian Spinone.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Rebecca at the Well by Francesco (?Paceco) de Rosa (Naples 1607 - Naples 1656). Rebecca offers a large moulded ewer to the kneeling Eliezer and six others. The scene depicts the bibical story related in Genesis (24) when Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. This picture was once bought in the 1850s as a Velázquez but recent cleaning and restoration has fully vindicated its reattribution to this colourful Neapolitan pupil of Massimo Stanzione.
Provenance
Bought by Colonel the Hon. Edward Douglas-Pennant, 1st Baron Penrhyn of Llandegai (1800 – 1886) though C. J. Nieuwenhuys (who had imported it from Spain as a Velázquez) in around 1850; thence by descent to Hugh Napier Douglas Pennant, 4th Baron Penrhyn of Llangedai (1894 – 1949), who left Penryhn and its estates to his niece, Lady Janet Marcia Rose Pelham (1923 - 1997), who with her husband John Charles Harper, thereupon assumed the name of Douglas Pennant, and in 1951 made over the castle and part of its contents in lieu of death-duties to HM Treasury (from the estate of Hugh, 4th Baron Penrhyn (1894 – 1949), which transferred them to the National Trust
Credit line
Penrhyn Castle, The Douglas Pennant Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Francesco Paceco de Rosa (Naples 1607 - Naples 1656), artist previously catalogued as by Diego Velázquez (Seville 1599 - Madrid 1660), artist