03 — ARTWORK
Cain and Abel
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 198 x 147 cm
- TYPE
- Religious
PALETTE
HOVER OR TAP A SWATCH FOR NAME, SHARE AND HEX. SAMPLED FROM THE IMAGE — INDICATIVE, NOT A PIGMENT ANALYSIS.
THIS REPRODUCTION
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CURRENT LOCATION · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica
- FILE
- 750 × 1002 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
The catalogue number found at the bottom of the canvasA woven cloth used as a support for painting. The best-quality canvas is made of linen; other materials used are cotton, hemp, and jute. It is now so familiar a material that the word 'canvas' has become almost a synonym for an oil painting, but it was not until around 1500 that it began to rival the wooden panel (which was more expensive and took longer to prepare) as the standard support for movable paintings (the transition came later in Northern Europe than in Italy). Canvas is not suitable for painting on until it has been coated with a ground, which isolates the fabric from the paint; otherwise it will absorb too much paint, only very rough effects will be obtainable, and parts of the fabric may be rotted by the pigments. It must also be made taut on a stretcher or by some other means. allowed to identify this painting as the Cain and Abel that was in the Barberini collection in the nineteenth century. This canvas was attributed to Vouet. The old attribution held even after the acquisition of the painting by the state in 1981. A check of the seventeenth-century inventories of the Barberini collection reveals four pictures of the same subject: among these, the National Galleryan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen). painting can be identified with a canvas cited (without the name of its author) in a 1655 inventory. The same inventory lists a pendantOne of a pair of related art works, or related elements within an art work. depicting Saint Sebastian cured by the Pious Women. As this painting has been convincingly attributed to Pietro Novelli, known as Il Monrealese, the discovery of the relationship between the two paintings has led to the attribution of the National Gallery picture to the same artist.
OTHER WORKS BY PIETRO NOVELLI
- Portrait of a Young Man with an Earring 1639
- Our Lady of Mount Carmel 1641
- Marriage of the Virgin 1647
The archive catalogues no further works by this artist.
TRY SAME COLLECTION →CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r43f83a2db27fad,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Cain and Abel by NOVELLI, Pietro},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-14},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/novelli-pietro-r3a9cf32f313832/cain-and-abel-r43f83a2db27fad},
urldate = {2026-09-14},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-14. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.