Rachel Hiding the Idols

Rachel Hiding the Idols — the episode from Genesis 31 in which Rachel, having stolen her father Laban's household gods as Jacob's family fled Mesopotamia, sat on them to conceal them from her father's search — is an unusual Old Testament subject requiring careful art-historical positioning. Castiglione executed this work around 1650, likely as a drawing or oil sketch on paper given the medium specification. The subject was not common in European painting, and its attraction for Castiglione likely lay in the opportunity for an intimate interior scene of concealment and deception within a larger narrative of flight and freedom. The National Galleries of Scotland hold this as part of their Italian Baroque holdings, representing the range of Castiglione's subject matter beyond his celebrated pastoral compositions.

A work on paper attributed to 1650 may be an oil sketch, a coloured drawing, or a modello for a larger composition. Castiglione used oil on paper techniques to achieve loose, gestural effects impossible on canvas. The intimate indoor setting — Rachel seated on the hidden idols — demanded a more compressed spatial handling than his open pastoral canvases.