The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man
1618/1628
Painter

Artwork overview
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Medium
oil on panel
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
overall: 61.6 x 45.4 cm (24 1/4 x 17 7/8 in.)
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Accession
1939.1.88
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Don Taddeo Barberini [1603-1647], Rome, by 1645; his son, Prince Maffeo Barberini [1631-1685];[1] remained in the Barberini family collection until at least 1922;[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome); purchased 1932 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] Taddeo left Rome in 1645 for Paris, where he died two years later. The painting is listed in his posthumous inventory of 1647-1648 and again in Maffeo's posthumous inventory of 1686; both are published in Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art, New York, 1975: 196, no. 168, and 400, no. 138. This information was provided by Burton Fredericksen and Margaret Clark of the Getty Provenance Index (letter of 24 February 1986, NGA curatorial files); Eduard Safarik, "Domenico Fetti 1983", in Il Sciento nell'arte e nella cultura con riferimenti a Mantova, Mantua, 1985: 52, had reached the same conclusion. Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools XVI-XVIII Century, London, 1973: 68, and still in Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:178, was unaware of the inventories published by Lavin and of other versions of the subject. She thus conflated references to these versions in the Gonzaga, Crozat, and various English collections into a single erroneous provenance for the Barberini-Washington panel.
Lavin 1975: 687, placed the painting owned by Taddeo and Maffeo in the Galleria Corsini in Florence, but as Fredericksen noted, her reference is to Alinari no. 45390, which is a photograph taken of the NGA painting when it was exhibited at the Florence exhibition in 1922.
[2] The expert opinion by Roberto Longhi, dated 1932, on the back of a photograph in the Kress Files, NGA, states that this is the painting he discovered in the Barberini collections in 1922 and selected for the Florence exhibition that year, where it was listed as still being in the Barberini collection.
[3] According to Shapley 1973: 68, and 1979: 1:179; see also The Kress Collecrion Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2263.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
1922
Mostra della pittura italiana del seicento e del settecento, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 1922, no. 409.
Bibliography
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 63, no. 199, as The Parable of Dives and Lazarus by Domenico Feti.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 243, repro. 102, as The Parable of Dives and Lazarus by Domenico Feti.
1954
Arslan, Edoardo. "Cinque disegni veneti." Arte Veneta 8 (1954): 291, n. 2.
1955
Michelini, Paola. "Domenico Fetti a Venezia." Arte Veneta 9 (1955): 135-136, fig. 148.
1958
De Logu, Giuseppe. Pittura veneziana dal XIV al XVIII secolo. Bergamo, 1958: 276.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 221, repro., as The Parable of Dives and Lazarus by Domenico Fetti.
1961
Askew, Pamela. "The Parable Paintings of Domenico Fetti." The Art Bulletin 43, no. 1 (March 1961): 31-32, fig. 9. Reprinted in Seventeenth Century Art in Italy, France and Spain The Garland Library of the History of Art 8. New York, 1976.
1965
Perina, Chiara. "Pittura." In Mantova. Le Arti. 3 vols. Mantua, 1965: 3:464.
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 49, as The Parable of Dives and Lazarus by Domenico Fetti.
1967
Lehmann, Jürgen. "Domenico Fetti. Leben und Werk des römischen Malers." Ph.D. dissertation, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 1967: 123-124, 209, no. 72.
Moir, Alfred. The Italian Followers of Caravaggio. 2 vols. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967: 1:81, n. 40; 2:70.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 42, repro., as The Parable of Dives and Lazarus by Domenico Fetti.
1970
Moir, Alfred. "A Fetti Drawing in Munich." Pantheon 28 (1970): 529, n. 11.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 70.
1973
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 68-69, fig. 125.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 128, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:178-180; 2:pl. 124, as The Parable of Dives and Lazarus.
1981
Pallucchini, Rodolfo. La pittura veneziana del sciento. 2 vols. Milan, 1981: 1:138.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 152, repro.
Safarik, Eduard. "Domenico Fetti 1983." In Il Seicento nell'arte e nella cultura con riferimenti a Mantova. Mantua, 1985: 52.
1990
Safarik, Eduard. Fetti. Milan, 1990: 16-17, 81-82, 87-88, 122, 131-133, repro., 221.
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: 89-95, repro. 91.
Inscriptions
lower left, an inventory number: 101
Wikidata ID
Q20176972