Gioacchino Assereto attributed

(1600-1650),
attributed to Moses striking water from the rock, c. 1640, pen, brush and brown ink, brown and grey wash, over black chalk, on laid paper, 22,2 x 33 cm, browned, stained, mounted, unframed, (Sch)
Provenance:
Private collection, Italy.

The present drawing is related to a painting of the same subject by Gioacchino Assereto (c. 1640) in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (Inv. Nr. POO1134; oil on canvas, 245 x 300 cm) and may have been executed as an early study in the later development of the composition. At that time the subject was rarely depicted in Genova; however, the sheet can be compared with the prevalent style in Genova around 1630. The raised arm of Moses may have been drawn after a life model. The strange articulation of Moses’s left hand fingers with the carefully rendered contour lines are comparable with the left hand of a seated figure in Assereto’s ceiling fresco in the Basilica della SS. Annunziata del Vastato in Genova painted around 1630.