Attributed to Orazio de Ferrari

Attributed to ORAZIO DE FERRARI (Voltri, 1606-Genoa, 1657).
"Job tormented".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It presents restorations.
It has a carved wooden frame with faults.
Measurements: 115 x 146,5 cm; 133 x 167 cm (frame).
This scene represents the moment in which Job says to his wife "Curse God and die", representing the repudiation of his wife that was one of the tests that the devil put to him to tempt him to renounce in the faith of God. In this case we see how the artist has captured a specific moment with dynamic attitudes, the half-open mouth of both characters and the hand gestures indicate that they are talking, so the painter has made the viewer contemplate a scene of great intimacy and everyday life.
Aesthetically the work is close to the painting of the master Orazio de Ferrari, a pupil of the Voltri painter Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo, one of the main exponents of Genoese Mannerism. His first works, executed around 1630 in the workshop of Ansaldo, whose granddaughter he married, are the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and the Virgin and Child, Saint Jerome and Saint where it can already be seen how the painter is fixed in the colorism of Rubens. In the works after 1640 we can appreciate the progressive overcoming of mannerism in favor of a clearer structure and a greater naturalism. The presence in his work of a lively naturalism derived from the Genoese Assereto, as well as the presence in Genoa of Vouet and Orazio Gentileschi, together with a colorism inspired by Rubens and Van Dyck, led the famous critic Roberto Longhi to the famous definition for De Ferrari of "naturalistic baroque". His production is in fact concentrated on altarpieces for Genoese and Ligurian religious buildings, together with sporadic cases of profane subjects for private collectors, such as the famous Fable of Latona, painted in 1638 for the Count of Monterrey, Viceroy of Naples, and the Rape of the Sabine Women in the Zerbone collection. Between 1651 and 1652 he was called to the Principality of Monaco by the Honored Prince II to paint a series of frescoes in the Palazzo Grimaldi.