Viaje de Jacob a Caná
Luca Giordano·1687
Historical Context
Jacob's Journey to Canaan belongs to the Old Testament cycle of Jacob subjects that Giordano treated particularly during his Spanish period, following the patriarch's story from his encounter with Rachel through his long sojourn with Laban and eventual return to the Promised Land. The journey narrative gave Giordano material for landscape and figure composition in an outdoor setting — the travelling party with its animals, servants, and wagons moving through terrain that he could render with the atmospheric landscape sensibility he brought to his outdoor subjects. The Escorial and other Spanish royal buildings that Giordano decorated contained extensive fresco cycles on Old Testament themes, and the individual canvas subjects he produced for the Spanish collector market during this decade often reflected the same narrative programs in a more intimate easel format appropriate for private devotional use.
Technical Analysis
The traveling procession creates a horizontal, frieze-like composition with figures, animals, and possessions moving across the landscape. Giordano's panoramic treatment captures the epic scale of the biblical migration.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the horizontal, frieze-like composition of figures, animals, and possessions: the migration format requires continuous movement across the picture plane that Giordano handles with his characteristic compositional fluency.
- ◆Look at the panoramic scale of the landscape: Giordano creates a setting of epic breadth appropriate to a narrative of divinely guided migration.
- ◆Find the variety of figures and animals in the procession: the patriarch's household moving with flocks and family requires compositional organization of numerous different elements.
- ◆Observe that this 1687 Prado work was painted five years before Giordano himself made a major journey — from Naples to Madrid — that would define his career's final decade.
