The prophet Elias and the widow of Sarepta

Bernardo Strozzi's depiction of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Sarepta — the poor widow who shared her last flour and oil with the prophet during a famine, and whose supplies miraculously did not run out — is among the Genoese painter's most celebrated Old Testament canvases. Now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the 1630 work was painted after Strozzi had moved from Genoa to Venice, where his colorism and handling of texture reached full maturity under the influence of Venetian painting. Strozzi was a Capuchin friar who left the order in difficult circumstances and rebuilt his career as a painter, developing a rich, spontaneous brushwork style that owed debts to Rubens (who visited Genoa in 1607) and Flemish genre painting as well as Italian traditions. The widow's poverty — communicated through humble dress and domestic surroundings — contrasts with Elijah's prophetic authority, while the miraculous abundance of the story turns privation into celebration.

Canvas with Strozzi's characteristic painterly spontaneity: thick, visible brushwork in drapery and background, smoother finish on faces and hands. Rich, warm color — umber, ochre, vermilion — creates the Venetian-influenced palette of his mature style. The domestic objects of the scene — flour vessel, oil jug, bread — are rendered with the tactile pleasure he brought to still-life elements within narrative compositions.