Like many other works by Andrea di Lione, Jacob’s journey, c.1635-65, was previously attributed to Genoese painter Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Il Grechetto). It is one of the most successful landscapes with figures by Lione, who first studied with battle painter Aniello Falcone (1607-1656) and later developed a more bucolic manner under the influence of Castiglione, whom he lived alongside in Naples and very possibly in Rome.

The scene almost certainly represents a passage from Genesis (31:25-31) that recounts the moment when Laban catches up to Jacob on Mount Galaad and rebukes him for having fled with his daughters, Leah and Rachel, and his flocks. Laban appears at the right, with grey beard, and his energetic gesture seems to personify his words from verse 29, It is in the power of my hand to do you hurt. At the left of the composition Jacob appears on horseback with Rachel, who holds her son Joseph in her arms. The child wears a crown of leaves and flowers on his head. Leah, the woman on the right wearing a blue scarf, has her back to the viewer. In the background the camels from Jacob’s caravan are visible in a gap in the terrain. As with other works by Lione, here the light is soft and delicate, and the tree leaves and trunks are carefully and lightly painted in a range of ochres, greys and light greens. These contrast with the more saturated colours on the figures, including Rachel’s salmon-coloured dress, which in turn brings out her flesh tones and those of her son and the various shades of blue that dot the main figures.

This painting belongs to the great tradition of depictions of voyages of Old Testament patriarchs, first popularised by artists such as Jacopo and Leandro Bassano, and followed by others such as Sinibaldo Scorza (1589-1631), the Genoa-based Flemish painter Jan Roos (1591-1638) and especially Castiglione, who is quite rightly mentioned in some old inventories as a painter il quale dipingeba spesso li viaggi di Giacobbe (who often painted Jacob’s journey). These pastoral paintings with biblical subjects allowed painters to depict large groups of figures, animals and objects in motion. Castiglione and Lione brought a more lyrical and grandiose feeling to this tradition, partly because they gave greater importance to landscape, echoing Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.

As mentioned above, Castiglione and Lione’s works bear many similarities, so attributions of their paintings are in constant flux and their oeuvres are still disputed. This work, specifically, shares numerous motifs and figures -perhaps the least convincing ones- with a Jacob’s journey signed by Castiglione, dated 1633, now in a private collection in New York (see for example, Sestieri, 1994). This work in turn is related to a Jacob’s journey signed by Lione at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. It has also been linked to a work in Dresden that shares the same composition, with some variants.

From a chronological standpoint, mention of this painting in the 1666 inventory of the Alcázar Palace in Madrid, following Philip IV’s death, indicates that it cannot have been made later than that date. Indeed, the work may be from the period when Castiglione’s influence on Lione was most marked: between 1635 and the 1660s (González, R.: Italian Masterpieces. From Spain´s Royal Court, Museo del Prado, 2014, p. 174).