Pieter Lastman
, Dutch, 1583-1633
Title
Joseph Selling Corn in EgyptDate1612
MediumOil on wood panel
Dimensions
58 x 87 cm
Signedlower right: 1612 / P Lastman fecit [P L in monogram]
Credit LinePurchased, 1927
Object numberNGI.890
DescriptionHaving been sold as a slave to Egypt by his envious half-brothers, Joseph interpreted a dream of the Pharaoh that no one had been able to explain. According to Joseph, Egypt would experience seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. As a reward for the prophesy, the Pharaoh promoted Joseph and gave him the responsibility of storing up food in preparation for the famine. Joseph ?nally met his brothers again when they were sent by their father, Jacob, to Egypt to buy corn. Lastman was the leading history painter in Amsterdam in the 1610s and 1620s, but is now chie?y remembered as Rembrandt’s teacher. Lastman’s paintings, often populated with many ?gures, reveal the in?uence of the German painter Adam Elsheimer, whom he had befriended during his stay in Rome between 1602 and 1607. Lastman’s many works with biblical and mythological subjects served, in turn, as inspiration to several generations of Dutch history painters.
March 2016
ProvenanceProbably The Hague, 23 November 1779, Iman Pauw sale, lot 107; on the market in Britain, 1913; Bernard McCoy, Belfast, 1923; purchased, Bernard McCoy, Belfast, 1927 Exhibition HistorySeventeenth Century Art in Europe, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1938
Centenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, October - December 1964