Joseph Interpreting the Baker’s and Cupbearer’s Dreams

ICONOGRAPHY

The painting depicts the story told in the Book of Genesis (Gen 40:1-19), in which Joseph, who is in prison in Egypt, interprets the dreams of two of Pharaoh’s servants who are his fellow inmates. Joseph, the son of Jacob, lived in the land of Canaan, where his father had settled and established a new home. Joseph was the youngest brother, born to Jacob in the latter’s old age, and thus also his most beloved son. Joseph’s brothers naturally hated him because they were jealous of his status as their father’s favourite. The first two dreams placing Joseph on a podium came to him in his youth. He told his brothers about them, but this only served to increase their hatred, as in one of the dreams Joseph acquired supremacy over them. They determined to rid themselves of him at the earliest opportunity, initially by stripping him and throwing him into a well in the desert, then by selling him to the nomadic Ishmaelite tribe who took him to Egypt and sold him on, in their turn, to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s eunuch and captain of the guard. Joseph worked with Potiphar until the latter’s wife, finding him attractive, attempted to seduce him. Joseph rejected her, however, and so, in her wrath, she accused him of trying to rape her.

The 17th century witnessed a spate of paintings inspired by the story of Joseph, the longest story in the Old Testament. The episodes most frequently depicted were Joseph being stripped of his clothing and thrown down a well, his brothers selling him to the Ishmaelites, his alleged attempt to possess Potiphar’s wife, which allowed the artists of the Baroque era to stage a dramatic, gripping and highly theatrical moment, his interpretation of the dreams of Pharaoh’s baker and cupbearer – either together, or separately in two companion pieces –, and his interpretation two years later of the dreams of Pharaoh himself who, having learnt of the young man’s skill, was curious to discover the meaning of his own dream.

The Catholic Church argued that the whole story of Joseph, which takes up fully eleven chapters in the Bible (Gen 37-48), made him one of Christ’s forerunners, akin, for example, to the Hebrew prophets who shared Joseph’s gift for foretelling the future and his duty to guide others.

Episode after episode, it was a story that went straight to the heart of certain cherished Catholic values: brotherhood (in this instance, in a negative sense), the acceptance of sacrifice, loyalty, freedom (and free will) and hope.

At the same time, it revealed the evil implicit in certain human failings which man can shake off through prayer and faith, such as jealousy, greed, betrayal, malice, lying and so forth.

Just like Christ, so Joseph, too, is a rightful victim of the godless: initially of his brothers, then of Potiphar’s wife, and finally of Pharaoh’s cupbearer who forgets to plead with Pharaoh to have him released from prison.

In this context, Magnasco’s interpretation of the iconography chosen by his patron prompted him to choose an unconventional setting (in keeping with the unconventional nature of his entire artistic output).

As we shall see below, the need to convey the idea of a theatrical stage set – not in any generic sense for compositional purposes, but actually reflecting a real play – caused the painter, on the one hand, to build a kind of scenery made of props and surfaces, probably (as Franchini Guelfi argues) by copying a set builder’s specific design. According to Franchini Guelfi «the definition of the set with two lateral pilasters, the “angular” view resting on the edge of the central pilaster and on the two diverging lines at the sides, invented by Ferdinando Bibiena and typical of so many theatrical stage sets in the first half of the 18th century, and finally, the two Gothicising pointed arches, which at that time were affected solely by such set builders as the Galliari brothers and Pietro Righini, all suggest that the painting emulates, for a cultivated Milanese collector of the theatre and of music, the central stage set of a play that was being performed at the time»¹ (see below).

The artist did not choose a central view. The observer is positioned on the right and his gaze is drawn into the spatial depth that the painter has skilfully created. The lateral viewpoint is typical of the sets designed by Bibiena (FIG. 1; see below), yet there is more, and it appears to be deliberate: the protagonist of the episode, thus also its symbolic figure, is not in the centre of the scene but quite a way away from it, over on the left. He might even be confused with the other figures – another nine prison inmates – had Magnasco not chosen to clad him, rather than in the basically monotone brown garb of the others where any lighter shades serve solely to bring in the light, in white and blue, white being conventionally associated with the concept of purity and innocence, while blue is the colour of the sacred, of grace and of the infinite. Colours alone had a specific significance in the language of an audience capable of linking each detail with a given meaning on the basis of an alphabet largely lost on us today. Decoding that alphabet is one of the art historian’s tasks. So here we have Joseph portrayed as the hero of good triumphing over evil, and as the man guiding his fellows towards the future, thus foreshadowing Christ.

Magnasco’s choice of light also differs from the dark, drab interiors more typically associated with his work. Clarity and light signify hope and reason. The lighter parts of the painting, apart from Joseph himself, run down the central axis of the scene, the tallest column. This is a stage director’s ploy, of course, but we should not forget that the column stands for stability and strength, including that of faith.

ATTRIBUTION AND DATING

Apart from Laura Muti and Daniele De Sarno Prignano, both of whom only knew the painting from photographs, scholars unanimously agree that the painting is by Magnasco’s own hand, identifying his unique brushwork consisting of rapid strokes and the tocco technique, twisting drapery, the complete absence of drawing and immediate execution, the use of the “economizing” technique in handling the silhouettes of the figures in relation to the background, strands of white to apply highlights, and paint mixed with colour applied on colour directly on the canvas.

Franchini Guelfi underscores his «darting brushwork with its extremely lively strands of light designed not to build but to fray his forms into fragments with an agitated, broken rhythm, the palette orchestrated in shades of brown with touches of white and of bright blue …»².

These stylistic considerations point to a date of 1726-1730.

A matter for debate in scholarly circles – as, indeed, is invariably the case with Magnasco’s backdrops, be they landscape or architecture – is whether, in this instance, the theatrical setting is the product of his own hand or rather that of one of the specialists with whom we know him to have worked: for landscapes, primarily with Antonio Francesco Peruzzini of Ancona, absolutely sporadically with Marco Ricci of Venice, and occasionally also with lesser-known or currently unknown landscape artists (see biography); and for architecture, almost exclusively with the Lombard painter Clemente Spera.

Fausta Franchini Guelfi has stressed on more than one occasion³ that, in many instances, Magnasco painted the entire picture himself, even if he did hark back to the style of his specialist fellows whose art and style, working “shoulder to shoulder” with them on each occasion, it was easy for a master of his talent and skill to emulate. It is a simple matter for those familiar with Magnasco’s highly individual brushwork to tell them apart. In this instance, I agree with Franchini Guelf in attributing the painting to him in its entirety, a painting therefore produced without the assistance of others, apart from an echo of another artist’s model for the specifically theatrical stage sets and props as we mentioned above.

It has been pointed out that, while it is currently impossible to put forward the name of a specific set designer for this background, it is certainly interesting to compare it with the Royal Guardhouse and the Front of a Wild Beasts’ Menagerie designed by Pietro Righini for a performance of the Medo at the Teatro Ducale in Parma in 1728 and engraved by Jacopo Vezzani and Martin Engelbrecht, in connection both with the pointed arches in the centre of the stage and with the nature of the prison illustrated in the Menagerie⁴.

On a more general level, a similarity has also been detected with the art of Ferdinando Galli Bibiena (1657-1743) of Bologna, whose success as a stage builder resulted in his working in various cities in Italy: Genoa (1694/5, 1700), Turin (1694, 1698/9), Rome (1696/7) Milan (every year between 1692 and 1708), Mantua (1696, 1706) and Naples (1699/1700). Thanks to Bibiena’s reputation, the Emperor Charles VI even invited him to Vienna, where his designs for spectacular performances and festive apparatus won him the title of “first theatrical architect” in 1717.

Bibiena’s style was also well known in Milan⁵, but in this context his work in Vienna is of particular interest, because this picture by Magnasco is very close to those that the artist was commissioned to paint for the convent of Seitenstetten in Austria by Count Hieronymus Colloredo⁶, and close to the Synagogue in the Art Institute of Chicago (FIG. 2) indeed so much so that, as we saw, a date of some time between 1726 and 1730 has been put forward for it. Whatever the case, we are unquestionably looking at a work of the artist’s full maturity.

THE PAINTING’S UNIQUE FEATURES AND ITS HISTORICAL-CULTURAL FRAME OF REFERENCE

In discussing the painting’s iconography, we have deliberately mentioned the figure of a patron in connection with certain choices, ruling out the possibility that Magnasco can have chosen such a unique scene of his own accord, on the grounds that it is clearly a far cry from the manner in which he customarily depicts his chosen subjects. When they are religious in nature, he tends to focus on the themes of prayer and meditation, for instance with penitent friars or monks at prayer (FIG. 3), with pilgrims bound for a votive chapel or with Capuchin friars around a fire, underscoring the significance of a community at prayer.

In the event of a reference to a story from the Bible, from history or from mythology, an interpretation in a moral vein was typical of the period and possibly intended to serve also as a warning, or else it might be designed to celebrate the patron’s virtuous qualities.

For this picture, which occupies so unique a place in the painter’s career, in addition to the iconological interpretation offered here (see above), we should highlight its link with coeval portraiture, as explored by Franchini Guelfi⁷, which leads us back once again to the time when Milan was under Austrian rule.

The story of Joseph lent itself extremely well not only to considerations of a religious nature but also to the theme of royal authority, which was obviously of interest to the Habsburg Empire. Indeed, it is no mere coincidence that the story was the subject of no fewer than three “sacred actions” or oratorios sung in the imperial chapel at the Viennese court, all of which shared the fact that both their music and their lyrics were written by Italians. They were the Giuseppe of 1722, with lyrics by Apostolo Zeno and music by Antonio Caldara, the Giuseppe ri­conosciuto of 1733, with lyrics by Pietro Metastasio and music by Giuseppe Porsile, both of which focused on the recognition of Joseph by his brother after he became Pharaoh’s minister (Gen 44:33-4), and the Gioseffo che interpreta i sogni, also set to music by Caldara (Venice 1670/1 – Vienna 1736)⁸ but with lyrics by Giovanni Battista Neri, which was performed in 1726 for Charles VI, who is known to have been an ardent music enthusiast.

The Par­te Prima or first part of the oratorio begins precisely with the scene depicted by Magnasco, in addition to which an aria sung by Joseph conveys in words and music the very same theme of his obsession with his prison and his deprivation of freedom that shines through in part in Magnasco’s painting: «Forse vi turba il ritenere avvinto / fra queste mura il piede? Ah! vi consoli / il saper, che nel mondo / ogn’uomo è prigionie­ro, / e che l’aver angusto / il su car­cere, o vasto / non fa che di più do­glia, o minor pena / non abbia ogni mortal la sua catena». («Are you troubled by having your feet / fettered amid these walls? Ah, may you be consoled / by the knowledge, that in this world / every man is a prisoner, / and that having a prison / that is narrow, or vast / makes it neither more nor less grievous / for every mortal to have his chains»).

The performance is highly likely to have been repeated in Milan, where there was great interest in the musical production from the Austrian capital and, as Franchini Guelfi suggests⁹, it may well have been the stage set of that performance that inspired Magnasco.

While it is true that we need to envisage a specific patron from this unusual work by Magnasco, it is also true that it falls into a trend encompassing themes close to the heart of the very intellectual circles that turned to Magnasco on more than one occasion, and to which the painter was himself very sensitive. It is absolutely plausible to suggest that the artist played an active part in the debates taking place in his day. The process involving the enlightened abhorrence and denunciation of the corruption, religious intolerance, social prejudice and ignorance rife at the time also encompassed the very topical theme of injustice in the context of the exercise of power. The tragic situation in prisons, with detainees forced to put up with absolutely wretched conditions, the injustice of sentences handed down and the cruel methods of torture practised, all played a specific role in the firm social criticism pursued by Magnasco (and by his enlightened patrons). Indeed, a number of his paintings are dramatically explicit, for instance his Interrogations in Jail now in the Kunsthistorishes Museum in Vienna (FIG. 4) and his Arrival and Questioning of the Prisoners in Jail now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux (FIG. 5).

In the case of the Gaudium Magnum Collection’s painting, Magnasco (and his patron) have succeeded in producing an admirable synthesis of several levels, from the religious to the social and from the sacred to the moral, in a picture which, for all the reasons discussed above, should be considered as a one-of-its-kind, with all the unique features of a masterpiece.