01 Work, Interpretation of the bible, Giovanni Battista Langetti's Joseph interprets the baker's dreams in prison, with Footnotes #216

Giovanni Battista Langetti

Joseph interprets the baker's dreams in prison

Oil on canvas

124 x 173 cm

Private collection

Estimate for 20,000 - 30,000 GBP in April 2015

Joseph was falsely accused and thrown into prison. In prison, Joseph did the work of interpreting dreams for these politically connected individuals. Joseph met two of Pharaoh’s officials who were incarcerated, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker.

The chief baker he said to Joseph, “I also had a dream: there were three cake baskets on my head, and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.”  And Joseph answered and said, “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days. In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head—from you!—and hang you on a tree. And the birds will eat the flesh from you.”

There is another version of this subject by Langetti, with the same arrangement of figures but showing them in whole and with small differences to their posture, as well a different man in the background.

Giovanni Battista Langetti (1625–1676), also known as Giambattista Langetti, was an Italian late-Baroque painter. He was active in his native Genoa, then Rome, and finally for the longest period in Venice.

He first trained with Assereto, then Pietro da Cortona, but afterwards studied under Giovanni Francesco Cassana, appeared in Venice by the 1650s where he worked in a striking Caravaggesque style. He is thought to have influenced Johann Karl Loth and Antonio Zanchi. He painted many historical busts for private patrons in the Venetian territory and in Lombardy. He died at Venice in 1676. More on Giovanni Battista Langetti

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