The Worship of the Golden Calf

c. 1594

Dozens of men, women, and a few children gather in groups amid a grassy landscape with a mountain in the distance in this horizontal painting. All of the people have pale or ruddy skin and wear flowing cloaks over long tunics or gowns. Warm light from the upper left illuminates the two groups closest to us, which cluster along the left and right edges of the canvas. Each group is set against a dark background suggesting cave walls or rocky outcroppings. On our left, an elderly man sits with his back to us as he looks across this shoulder to our right. He wears an amber-brown robe with darker brown stripes, and a denim-blue boot on the foot we can see. His head is wrapped in a white turban, and his tan face is framed by a salt-and-pepper beard. Steel-blue fabric drapes across his hips. A man and woman stand just beyond him, facing us. The young, bearded, dark-haired man wears a gleaming sea-blue cloak over a burgundy-red garment. The woman is wrapped in a rust-red cloak and holds an infant close to her cheek. Along the right edge of the painting, two blond women and a young child gather around a table covered with a white cloth. The woman seated on the far side of the table wears a velvety, chocolate-brown gown with a white kerchief around her shoulders, and rose-pink fabric drapes across her lap. She faces us with her upper body turned to our right as she gazes up and to our right with one hand raised. A youth cradling a silver bowl filled with fruit stands behind her with his head also turned to look in the same direction. Along the rightmost edge of the canvas, a woman sits facing us, wearing a coral-red gown with one breast exposed along a low neckline. Blush-pink fabric patterned with teal-blue diamonds drapes over one shoulder and across her lap. She tilts her head to our right and gazes down at the child standing by her side. The child wears a silver-gray tunic and has closely cropped brown hair. The woman offers the child an orange fruit. An elderly, balding man with a long silver-gray beard and hair stands behind the woman, at the top of the group. His arms cross his chest while he bows slightly. Between the rocky outcroppings behind both groups, a grassy meadow stretches to a hazy blue mountain in the distance. A narrow stream runs across the painting just beyond the outcroppings. Several people at the far side of the stream flank a tall man with a long beard who stands facing us. He wears a full-length, brick-red robe with a black mantle draped over his head, across his arms, and down his back. A headdress over the mantle has peaks like a narrow crescent moon. To his right, our left, a man also wearing a red tunic and spruce-blue leggings bends down to place a gold circle or dish on a pile of other gold objects on the ground. Two women and two men stand clustered to his left, our right. The women wear blue-green robes, and the men have lead-gray cloaks. About twenty-five men and women along with two small children sitting on the ground create a band across the landscape beyond the group at the stream. They wear gold, aquamarine-blue, canary-yellow, and scarlet-red garments. To the left beyond this group, a crowd circles around a tall narrow structure supporting a gold-colored calf. The people look up at the animal while four women kneel in front, playing instruments. To our right, in the distance, four men and women sit around a cloth-covered table under a tent-like canopy. There are dishes on the table and a fifth person stands nearby, presumably serving the group. On a hill that rises steeply behind the tent, another group of four people recline in a similar canopied structure. At the center of the painting, between the tents and the group around the calf, a single bearded man with white hair walks toward our right in profile, the arm we can see extended. The landscape beyond the people has a lake lined with trees at the foot of the hazy mountain, which almost reaches the top of the composition. Finally, in the upper right corner, atop the rocky outcropping close to us, a person, seen from the waist down, kneels, wearing a rose-pink garment. Golden yellow flames flicker out around and behind the person.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

This complex scene depicts a series of events as told in Exodus 32, with several vignettes carrying the main narrative from the middle into the background. In the center middle ground, the Israelites watch as the high priest Aaron collects golden ornaments for the making of an idol in the form of a golden calf, which he is shown casting in the far background. In the left background, the completed calf is displayed upon an altar, surrounded by worshippers; in the center right background are scenes of feasting and merrymaking. In the far upper right, a fiery light bathes the lower body of Moses on Mount Sinai as he receives the Ten Commandments. (The upper part of the canvas was cut at some point.) In the foreground, to the left and right, are richly dressed revelers and observers. The man at the far upper left looking out of the scene appears to be a portrait.

The overall composition is loosely based upon one of the last works produced by the Tintoretto studio during Jacopo’s lifetime (The Gathering of the Manna, 1592/1594). The similarities suggest that The Worship of the Golden Calf was painted in the Tintoretto studio around the time of Jacopo Tintoretto’s death in 1594, or possibly later, when the shop was headed by his son Domenico.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 28


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 158.8 × 272.2 cm (62 1/2 × 107 3/16 in.)
    framed: 187.6 x 300.7 x 12.7 cm (73 7/8 x 118 3/8 x 5 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.180

More About this Artwork


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Hastings (or Hasting) collection, England.[1] possibly (David M. Koetser Gallery, New York).[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold 26 June 1935 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] The bill of sale to the Kress Foundation (see note 3) says the painting was "formerly in the Hasting's[sic] Collection, England." It has not yet been determined which collection this was; see notes in NGA curatorial files.
The Getty Provenance Index Database of the contents of sale catalogues lists a Christie's sale of 24-27 June 1833, held in Bath, England, of the large collection of "John Pura, Esq., deceased" (sale catalogue Br-13849). Lot number 130 of this sale, sold on the second day of the sale to "Rickets," was described as a painting by Tintoretto, "The Worshipping the Molten Calf, -- a grand composition of many figures." As there are no dimensions, further description, or illustration in the catalogue, it is not possible to determine if this was the NGA painting.

[2] See the letter of 27 October 1948, in NGA curatorial files, from Stephen Pichetto, Kress Foundation conservator, to John Walker, then NGA curator, in which Walker wrote that Koetser said he had once owned the painting. Koetser told Walker the painting had been purchased "at Christie's or at Sutherland's in three parts and that there was a fourth part that they did not succeed in acquiring." Walker suggested the fourth part "must have been the trees at the top."
[3] The bill of sale was for seven paintings and a number of decorative art objects (copy in NGA curatorial files). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2357.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1939

  • Masterpieces of Five Centuries, Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939, no. 55.

  • Dutch and Italian Masterpieces from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, Dayton Art Institute, 1939-1940, no catalogue.

1940

  • Masterpieces of Art. European & American Paintings 1500-1900, New York World's Fair, 1940, no. 19, repro.

Bibliography

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 194-195, no. 291.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 245, repro. 195.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 128, repro.

1948

  • Tietze, Hans. Tintoretto: The Paintings and Drawings. New York, 1948: 381.

1950

  • Pallucchini, Rodolfo. La giovinezza del Tintoretto. Milan, 1950: 153.

1957

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian School. 2 vols. London, 1957: 1:183.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 201, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 128.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 115, repro.

1970

  • De Vecchi, Pierluigi. L’opera completa del Tintoretto. Milan, 1970: 101, no. 139.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 201.

1973

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 54-55, fig. 98.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 340, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:471-472; 2:pl. 336, 336A,B.

1982

  • Pallucchini, Rodolfo, and Paola Rossi. Tintoretto: le opere sacre e profane. 2 vols. Venice, 1982: 1:171, no. 180; 2:fig. 236.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 230, no. 290, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 391, repro.

1999

  • Meijer, Bert W. “Flemish and Dutch Artists in Venetian Workshops: the Case of Jacopo Tintoretto.” In Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Dürer, Bellini and Titian. Edited by Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown. Exh. cat. Palazzo Grassi, Venice. Milan, 1999: 143, repro.

2009

  • Echols, Robert, and Frederick Ilchman. “Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology.” In Jacopo Tintoretto: Actas del congreso internacional/Proceedings of the International Symposium, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, February 26-27, 2007. Madrid, 2009: 144, no. S52.

Wikidata ID

Q20176702


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