Old Master, Giovanni Battista Langetti (1635-1676), Drunken Noah

117 × 167,5 cm
Oil on canvas

Langetti came from Rome, first studied with Gioacchino Assereto (1600-1649) in Genoa, then with Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) in Rome and with Giovanni Francesco Cassana (1611-1691) in Venice. He merged diverse influences in his work, but above all by Ribera and Caravaggio. Langetti often represented male nudes in his works, which are characterized by a mature or older age and an energetic life. He found his artistic specialization in depicting the aging of the body with expressive realism and in heroic or tragic characters. This is also shown by the painting with the drunkenness of Noah: Noah's son Ham discovers his drunken father bared and tells his brothers Sem and Japhet. These two cover his nakedness without looking at him. We see in the picture how Ham scolds his sleeping father with his index finger while the other two brothers solve the problem with decency. When Noah later found out about it, he cursed Ham's son and his descendants. Langetti has characterized the aged epidermis with virtuosity and a keen sense for the materiality of the color and how it stretches over the bones and tendons of the aged man. Giovanni Bellini first presented the topic in a dramatic close-up (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archeologie de Besançon). Langetti also treated elongated male nudes in other paintings, The Good Samaritan (Padua, private collection) or Cain flee after the murder of Abel (Nîmes, Musée des Beaux-Arts). Mattia Vinco dated the painting around 1670. Expert opinion by doc. Mattia Vinco, 24 March 2018