One of the most original and idiosyncratic figures of the Italian Baroque, Giovan Battista Spinelli developed a highly personal style from the varied influences he encountered between Abruzzo, northern Italy and, above all, Naples. A draughtsman of remarkable inventiveness, he devised compositions animated by elongated figures, nervous gestures, strongly marked physiognomies and a deliberately unstable sense of space. His eccentricity was already noted by Bernardo De Dominici, who in his biography of the painter also recalled Spinelli’s unusual interest in alchemy.

Hitherto unpublished, the present painting depicts the episode from Exodus in which the infant Moses is received by Pharaoh’s daughter after being found in the waters of the Nile. Spinelli transforms the sacred narrative into a scene of intense theatricality, using some of the most distinctive features of his style: a bright, shifting palette, broken rhythms of gesture, an intricate interplay of glances and diagonals, and an unusually eccentric composition. The figures are packed tightly into the space, heightening the Baroque theatricality of the scene, while the assured draughtsmanship holds the composition together.