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An elderly man kneels and leans back with his arms spread wide as he gazes up at another older man sitting in a chariot made of flames and pulled by white horses, which are held aloft by fawn-brown, puffy clouds, in this horizontal painting. Both men have pale skin and are partially bald with full beards. To our left, the kneeling man is mostly turned away from us, so we see the back of his ash-blond hair, a deeply furrowed brow, and a hooked nose. His head tips back and his mouth hangs open. He wears a long, mahogany-brown robe with a flax-yellow mantle draped over his left shoulder. One bare foot emerges from under the hem of the robe so we see the bottom of his foot, and his toes dig into the rock on which he kneels. The rock is painted with strokes of amber brown and sage, olive, and pine green, and it slopes down to a blue-green sea in the lower right corner of the painting. The man in the chariot, Elijah, is positioned across from the first man, to our right. With his body facing the kneeling man, Elijah turns his head to look up to the light streaming in from the upper left corner. Elijah’s right hand, on our left, grasps the white mantle wrapped around his tan robe, while the other hand extends to our right with fingers spread wide. A gold, spoked chariot wheel sits below that hand, facing us. Pale coral-peach flames curl around the wheel and flicker around Elijah’s legs. The flames continue to our left, blending into the bodies of the two muscular, white horses who climb the bank of sand-colored clouds that support the entire chariot. Each corner of the canvas has an inward curving, burnt-orange form, like mounting corners holding a photograph in an album.

Giuseppe Angeli

Elijah Taken Up in a Chariot of Fire, c. 1740/1755

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 174.6 x 264.8 cm (68 3/4 x 104 1/4 in.)

framed: 207 x 302.3 x 10.1 cm (81 1/2 x 119 x 4 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1952.5.70

Artists / Makers

Giuseppe Angeli (painter) Venetian, 1712 - 1798

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

San Giorgio in Alga, Venice, until 1806 or 1807.[1] Pivan collection, Venice, by 1934.[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); purchased 1950 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1952 to NGA.

[1] Zanetti, Anton Maris, Della pittura veneziana e delle oper pubbliche de' veneziani maestri, Venice, 1771: 477 (reprinted Venice, 1972). The church and monastery were suppressed in 1806 and the works of art removed in 1807; Zorzi, Alvise, Venezia scomparsa, 2 vols., Venice, 1972: 2:405-406.

[2] According to Pallucchini, Rodolfo, "Il pittore Francesco Polazzo," Rivista di Venezia (1934): 341.

[3] According to Paintings and Sculptures from the Kress Collection, Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951, Washington, D.C., 1951: 148. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/701.

Associated Names

Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Pivan Collection
San Giorgio in Alga

Technical Summary

The support is a rather coarse, plain-weave fabric with prominent nubby threads. It was prepared with a warm, pinkish tan ground, over which the opaque paint layer was freely applied with low to moderate impasto. There is little glazing or complex layering. X-radiographs show slight contour modification in the foreleg of the front horse, and reveal that Elijah's robe extends under the wheel. The reserve left in the flames for the wheel, however, suggests that only the section over the robe was painted as an afterthought, with an extension of the robe beyond the rim.

The corners of the support were once curved and have been filled with crudely painted strips of fabric to provide the present rectangular format. Cusping is evident along all the edges of the original support. The painting has numerous tears in the background: the most extensive are in an area of about 42 x 10 cm at the bottom of the wheel, with more tears around Elijah's right hand. Abrasion, especially in the background, has been heavily inpainted; the inpainting is slightly discolored. The present varnish is moderately yellowed. Discolored varnish was removed and the inpainting restored in 1948 by Mario Modestini.

Bibliography

1771: Zanetti, Anton Maria. Della pittura veneziana e delle opere pubbliche de' veneziani maestri. Venice, 1771: 477 (reprinted Venice, 1972).

1934: Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "Il pittore Francesco Polazzo." Rivista di Venezia 1934: 341, fig. 16, as by Francesco Polazzo.

1951: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 148, no. 64, repro., as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1956: Mühlberger, Richard. The Bible in Art: The Old Testament. London, 1956: 230, pl. 88. (As by Polazzo.)

1956: Pallucchini, Rodolfo. Piazzetta. Milan, 1956: 38, fig. 91, as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1956: Pigler, Andor. Barockthemen: eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. 2 vols. Budapest, 1956: 1:177, as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, but suggests Angeli.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 245, repro., as by Giovanni Battista Piazetta.

1961: Walker, John, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour. Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings & Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 1961: 165, repro. pl. 159.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 101, as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 89, repro., as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 163, 647, as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta or Francesco Polazzo.

1973: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 139, fig. 272, as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1974: Pigler, Andor. Barockthemen: eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. 3 vols. Rev. ed. Budapest, 1974: 1:180, as by Francesco Polazzo.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 264, repro., as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:366-367; 2:pl. 265, as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1981: Jones, Leslie. "The Paintings of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta." 3 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1981: 1:190-191; 2:238-240, no. R6.A; 3:fig. 137.

1982: Mariuz, Adriano, with Rodolfo Pallucchini. L'opera completa del Piazzetta. Milan, 1982: 129, no. A146, repro.

1982: Mollenhauer Hanstein, Mariana. "Giuseppe Angeli und die Venezianische Malerei des Settecento." Ph.D. dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, 1982: 36-37, 77, 88, 128, 148, no. 128, fig. 13.

1983: Knox, George. Unpublished catalogue entry, 1983. NGA curatorial files.

1983: Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "Il Piazzetta e la sua scuola." In Giambattista Piazzetta, il suo tempo. la sua scuola. Exh. cat. Palazzo Loredan-Vendramin-Calergi, Venice, 1983: 36.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 344, no. 471, color repro., as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 304, repro., as by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

1992: Knox, George. Giambattista Piazzetta 1682-1754. Oxford, 1992: 215, fig. 156.

1996: De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 4-7, repro. 5.