The painting is constructed through the painstaking orchestration of light, which is typical of a talented set designer like Diziani [...].

Although the painting entered the Cerruti Collection as a work by Sebastiano Ricci, it is now to be attributed to Ricci’s most important pupil, Gaspare Diziani, who, like his master, was from Belluno. Initially under the influence of Ricci, who was mainly responsible for taking Venetian art in a new direction at the turn of the 17th century, Diziani offered an original personal interpretation of history and decorative painting, making it extremely popular with the Venetian and European nobility. The size of the canvas suggests that it was commissioned privately as an easel painting. It represents the well-known biblical episode in which Moses changes Aaron’s rod into a serpent (Exodus 7:8-13) in front of the pharaoh. With regard to the attribution to Diziani, the construction of the figures with their characteristic angular aspect, the fragmented brushwork and flashes of light on acid tints, and sometimes slightly harsh colour combinations, leave no doubt that it is by his hand. Even the types of faces lead us to the same conclusion, revealing similarities to some of the most typical figures in Diziani’s production. The painting is constructed through the painstaking orchestration of light, which is typical of a talented set designer like Diziani who had worked, for example, with Alessandro Mauro in Dresden in 1717 and later in Venice, and probably for Cardinal Ottoboni’s circle in Rome. However, his skilful handling of light is also indebted to Tintoretto, whose “resolute and rapid” manner he interpreted, as did some of his contemporaries, in a way that was quite different from the norm in 18th-century Veneto painting.¹ The architectural setting, with its illuminated backdrops, reprises a composition that Diziani used several times; indeed, we find it in his most important works, such as Joseph Interprets the Pharaoh’s Dreams in Aschaffenburg.² Where dating is concerned, it is likely that the painting was executed fairly early on in the master’s career, when his work was still influenced in some respects by the late-Baroque style of Sebastiano Ricci. In fact, the language is characterised by pronounced 17th-century chiaroscuro and there is little evidence of a more Rococo style. In this regard, it can be associated with works executed in the 1720s, such as St Francis in Ecstasy (1727) in the church of San Rocco in Belluno. 

Denis Ton 

¹ Da Canal 1809, p. XXXV. 

² See Zugni-Tauro 1971, p. 61.