Moses and the Israelites following the pillar of fire
First half of the XVII century. Grey-brown wash, Grey-brown ink, Pencil, Pencil ground on yellow paper.Not on display
Moses guided the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt and into the Promised Land. God showed them the way by appearing to them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21-22). In this drawing the pillar appears at top left, framed by an oval cloud. Moses, protected by soldiers with lances, points to the pillar with his staff as he leads a vast procession of the Children of Israel down a hillside. The crowds pass a temple on a hilltop in the distance, its fenestrated drum, topped with a dome and lantern, resembling many a Baroque church in Sicily.
The drawing was formerly attributed to the seventeenth-century Genoese painter Bernardo Strozzi, but its style is entirely in keeping with that of the seventeenth-century Sicilian painter Pietro Novelli, (called il Monrealese). Novelli´s drawings share the same idiosyncratic handling and delicate penlines drawn with a fine nib, in long, flowing, serpentine lines. A good comparison may be made with Novelli´s Assumption of the Virgin, in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo, which is perhaps a design for the painter´s altarpiece in the Chiesa dei PP. Cappuccini at Ragusa, datable around 1643.
Monrealese first trained with his father, Pietro Antonio Novelli (1568-1625), and in 1618 began working under Vito Carrera (1555-1623). Most of his early work was painted in Palermo and much of it shows the influence of Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), who visited the city in 1624. At the beginning of the 1630s Monrealese visited Naples and Rome, coming into contact with the work of the High Renaissance masters Michelangelo and Raphael, as well as that of Caravaggio and Jusepe de Ribera. The work of Ribera would profoundly affect the painter´s later style (Turner, N.: Italian Masterpieces. From Spain´s Royal Court, Museo del Prado, 2014, p. 136).
Turner, Nicholas, 'Pietro Novelli. Moses and the Israelites following the pillar of fire'. Italian masterpieces from Spain's royal court, Museo del Prado, National Gallery of Victoria Thames & Hudson, 2014, p.136
