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Scene inspired by the "Book of Lamentations
Gaetano GANDOLFI (Bologna, 1734 - 1802),
Sanguine and white chalk highlights on beige paper
240 x 180 mm
Provenance: Marché de l'art, Paris
Bibliography: Donatella Biagi Maino, Gaetano Gandolfi, reproduced on Pl. LVI, as "Scène de sorcellerie", Location unknown.
The Bible, New World Translation (study edition)
Mimi Cazort, Bella Pittura L'art des Gandolfi, National Gallery of Canada, 1993; Prisco Bagni, Nuova Alfa Editoriale 1992, p. 462 - 464
More renowned for his scenes of everyday life, mythology and the New Testament, Gaetano Gandolfi presents us here with a scene as rare as it is cruel, inspired by texts from the Old Testament. It's true that Gaetano executed a painting depicting Atamas killing Learchos, son of Ino, in which a woman violently smashes an infant against a rock.
Our sheet, published by Donatella Biagi Maino generically and rather unconvincingly as Scène de sorcellerie, seems to us to be more of a precise literary reference. The absence of attributes generally associated with magic or sorcery, such as drawings traced on the ground, snakes, bats, snakes, smoke, etc., would seem to rule out this hypothesis. At the time of its acquisition, the drawing was vaguely associated with an episode from Dante's Inferno, which we have never been able to identify.
On the other hand, the Bible, and more specifically the Old Testament, offers several descriptions of women driven to devour their offspring because of the great famine of a besieged city, inflicted as punishment on the Jewish people:
Deuteronomy 28-53: "And the siege shall be so terrible, and your enemy shall cause you such distress, that you shall eat your own children, the flesh of sons and daughters, whom Jehovah your God shall have given you".
Book of Kings 6:29: "So we cooked my son and ate him, and the next day I said to her, 'Give us your son so that we can eat him'. But she hid her son.
Jeremiah 19:9: "And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. Yes, everyone will eat the flesh of his fellow man. For the city will be besieged and despair will seize them.
Lamentations 2:20: "See, O Jehovah, and look at the people you have treated so harshly. Must women continue to eat their own young, children born in good health?"
Lamentations 4:10: "Compassionate women cooked sister children with their own hands. They became their mourning food".
Leviticus 26:29: "So you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters".
Deuteronomy 28:54-57: "Even the most delicate and sensitive man among you will have no pity for his brother, his beloved wife or the sons left to him, and he will not share with them the flesh of his sons that he will eat, for he will have nothing else, so terrible will the siege be... And the delicate and sensitive woman among you, so delicate that she would never have thought of putting the sole of her foot on the ground, will have no pity for her beloved husband, her son or her daughter, not even for the placenta that comes out from between her legs or for the sons she has given birth to, for she will eat them in secret, so terrible will the siege be and so great will the distress your enemy will cause in your cities."
So Gaetano surprises us with this unusual illustration of a biblical episode never before depicted in art, let alone during the neo-classical period, which was generally more oriented towards subjects from classical antiquity or the New Testament.
