ROMAN SCHOOL, EARLY 18TH CENTURY

The attribution of this sprawling enigmatic painting has alluded scholars since it appeared at auction in 1999, where described as attributed to Carlo Maratti. Stylistically, it is, indeed, inspired by Carlo Maratti’s fluent classicism which represented the culmination of a long stylistic tradition that had begun with Raphael and was then reinvigorated by the expressive naturalism of Annibale Carracci, the compositional and dramatic clarity of Domenichino, and the refined understatement of Andrea Sacchi. Maratti's influences spread amongst late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Roman painters, today known as the Maratteschi.

This Finding of Moses has been related to three of Maratti’s drawings in Berlin-Dahlem: two head studies (inv. no. KdZ 15 221) and a study of a hand (inv. no. KdZ 23 055). There are also close parallels with frescoes by Niccolò Berrettoni, one of Maratti’s most successful pupils, including those at the Palazzo Altieri, Rome and the Villa Falconieri, Frascati (not unanimously accepted as autograph). Stylistic affinities with the Roman painter Luigi Garzi are also evident and point to a date of circa 1710.