THANKSGIVING OF NOAH

Thanksgiving of Noah



Giovanni Battista Gaulli- “Thanksgiving of Noah”

Introduction

Painting on oil canvas refers to the process in which painting is done with pigments and dry oil is used as a medium. This type of painting was done more commonly in modern Europe with linseed oil. Besides this, the other kinds of oil that were used by the painters to paint are walnut oil and safflower oil as well. Initially, oil paint was used by the Indian and the Chinese painters to paint Buddhist paintings during the fifth and ninth centuries. After this, oil paint became the most common medium of painting that was used by the painters to create artwork. This was mainly because of its advantages that became known.

Giovanni Battista Gaulli was painter who was born in May 1639 and he died in April 1709. He is more famously known as Baciccio. One of his famous paintings is “The Thanksgiving of Noah”. The museum had two Baciccio paintings in this gallery that portrays Old Testament stories of sacrifice that were thought to prefigure the death and resurrection of Christ.

Identification

The painter of the painting, “The Thanksgiving of Noah” is Giovanni Battista Gaulli who is more famously known as Baciccio. This is an Italian painting that was painted during the painter's lifetime between 1685 and 1690. The painting has been made with oil on canvas and the size of the painting is ca 1700 (The Royal Collection, 2011).

Description

In this scene, Noah and his family built an alter for burnt sacrifices in thanksgiving to mark the survival after the great flood. The rainbow in the heavens is symbolic of God's covenant with man never again to destroy the earth by flood.

Gaulli got some of his early commissions from Bernini in the vault in Rome. He is more famous for portraiture and subject painting. However, in “Thanksgiving of Noah” depicts the appearance of God to Noah and his family. This is visible because of the presence of the rainbow which is considered as a sign of God's covenant. Therefore, a sacrifice is offered in thanksgiving by Noah and his family to God from relieving them from the flood.

It is in the style of Gaulli's studies of the early to mid-1670s. Moreover, it is also close to a format of a painting the subject of which is “Palazzo Bianco”, Genoa, of c.1670 but it differs with respect to all the other details. This is because the Genoa painting does not depict the group of Almighty. In this painting, Noah is shown standing in the left while a sheep calmly waits to be sacrificed. Given the degree of cogitation of the drawing and yet the differences between it and the painting, it is hard to see it as a preparatory study, and Brugnoli was probably correct in seeing the drawing as an elaboration of the subject, of a few years later. This painting is more or less similar to that of the Old Testament and is from the early ...