The canvas depicts an episode of the Story of Isaac in the Book of Genesis (25, 29-34), which was the prelude to the trick devised by Jacob with the help of his mother Rebecca to dupe his twin brother Esau and his elderly father Isaac. 

Ever since it first appeared on the antiques market in November 1928, at the sale of Ernesto Bertollo’s collection at the Galleria Vitelli in Genoa,¹ the painting has been definitively attributed to Gioacchino Assereto, along with its pendant Isaac Blessing Jacob, whose whereabouts is presently unknown. Tiziana Zennaro² has reconstructed the ownership history - entirely Genoese - of the work, which, after being sold by Vitelli, entered the Queirolo Collection, according to an annotation by Roberto Longhi, where it most probably remained until 29 May 2007, when it was auctioned by Cambi³ and became part of the Cerruti Collection. 

The canvas depicts an episode of the Story of Isaac in the Book of Genesis (25, 29-34), which was the prelude to the trick devised by Jacob with the help of his mother Rebecca to dupe his twin brother Esau and his elderly father Isaac. Before exploiting Isaac’s blindness to obtain his blessing in his brother’s stead, Jacob cheats Esau out of his birthright, acquiring the various privileges that go with it for a pottage of lentils. In keeping with the Bible story, Esau is portrayed at the precise moment in which, exhausted from hunger, he renounces his birthright, while seizing a loaf and raising his left hand almost in blessing, as his brother offers him the dish of lentils. On the right, Rebecca watches the scene with her hand on her favourite son’s shoulder, clearly encouraging him. Assereto enriches the religious account by incorporating some naturalistic elements, such as the copper pail on the right, and the dog, also hungry, straining towards the table in search of food. The painting was first published, together with its pendant, by Giuseppe Delogu (1929)⁴ the year after the Bertollo sale, who proposed dating it to the height of the painter’s maturity, due to the similarities between Rebecca and the St Monica in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (inv. no. 60.35), which are marked enough to suggest that it was modelled on the latter. Delogu⁵ also made known a study - possibly a fragment of a larger composition - of a Head of an Old Woman, formerly in the Suida Collection, Vienna, whose whereabouts is now unknown. The woman’s lined face displays many similarities with that of Rebecca in the Cerruti work. Recently Alessandro Morandotti⁶ has identified the Head of a Man with Fur Hat, which has been in the Borromeo Collection at Isola Bella from 1690 at least, as a study for the Jacob documented here. Executed in oil on paper and subsequently mounted on canvas, the head had traditionally been attributed to Jacob Jordaens and to Peter Paul Rubens, due to the intense naturalism and free handling: characteristics also to be found in Esau Sells His Birthright. 

The attribution to Assereto and date proposed by Delogu remain unchanged in subsequent studies.⁷ 

Widely represented in 17th-century Genoese painting, the subject was replicated several times by Assereto himself, Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari and Bernardo Strozzi. Tiziana Zennaro⁸ has identified three autograph replicas in all, including the one under examination. The Cerruti version is closely linked stylistically to the one in Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (inv. no. P.B. 1372), which is small and displays slight variations in the composition and iconography; while the third interpretation of the theme, in which the dog and tableware in the Cerruti version also appear, is to be dated to the first half of the fifth decade of the 17th century.⁹ The success of the present work is also evidenced by the existence of at least three replicas, all executed with minor variations on the original.¹⁰ 

Francesca Romana Gaja 

¹ Galleria Vitelli, Genoa, Catalogo della vendita all’asta della raccolta Comm. Ernesto Bertollo, 12-17 November 1928, lot 168.

² Zennaro 2011, vol. I, pp. 435-436.

³ Cambi, Genoa, Asta di antiquariato. Mobili, ceramiche, argenti, tappeti, sculture, arazzi, orologi, gioielli dal XVI al XIX secolo, 29 May - 1 June 2007, p. 66, lot 1139.

⁴ Delogu 1929a, p. 218 fig. 3; p. 220.

⁵ Id. 1929b, p. 267, fig. 3.

⁶ A. Morandotti, in Morandotti, Natale 2011, pp. 312-314.

⁷ G. V. Castelnovi, “La pittura nella prima metà del Seicento dall’Ansaldo a Orazio de Ferrari”, in La pittura a Genova e in Liguria 1970-71, vol. II, p. 156; G. V. Castelnovi, “La pittura nella prima metà del Seicento dall’Ansaldo a Orazio de Ferrari”, in La pittura a Genova e in Liguria 1987, vol. II, p. 133; Zennaro 2011, vol. I, pp. 435-436.

⁸ Zennaro 2011, vol. II, p. 839.

⁹ Ibid., vol. I, p. 387.

¹⁰ Ibid., vol. I, p. 436.