''Belshazzar's Feast'' is a circa 1660-1665 oil on canvas painting by

Mattia Preti Mattia Preti (24 February 1613 – 3 January 1699) was an Italian Baroque artist who worked in Italy and Malta. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Saint John. Life Born in the small town of Taverna in Calabria, Preti was called ''Il Cava ...

, now in the

Museo nazionale di Capodimonte Museo di Capodimonte is an art museum located in the Palace of Capodimonte, a grand Bourbon palazzo in Naples, Italy. The museum is the prime repository of Neapolitan painting and decorative art, with several important works from other Italian ...

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

. Nicola Spinosa, ''Mattia Preti. Tra Roma, Napoli e Malta'', Napoli, Electa, 1999, ISBN 978-8851001292, p. 176. It shows a scene from chapter 5 of the

Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th century BC setting. Ostensibly "an account of the activities and visions of Daniel, a noble Jew exiled at Babylon", it combines a prophecy of history with an eschatology (a ...

History

Banquets were a common motif in Preti's later work, having seen

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

' ''

The Feast of Herod The Feast of Herod refers to the episode in the Gospels following the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, when Salome presents his head to her parents. The account in the Book of Mark describes Herod holding a banquet on his birthday for his high of ...

'' in the Roomer collection in Naples and then in the Vandeneynden collection. The painting was first mentioned in the historical record by Bernardo De Dominici, who saw it in the Sanseverino family collection in Naples alongside other works by Preti such as ''

The Banquet of Absalom ''The Banquet of Absalom'' ( it, Convito di Assalonne) is an oil on canvas painting by Mattia Preti, created in 1660–1665, now in the Museo nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples.Nicola Spinosa, ''Mattia Preti. Tra Roma, Napoli e Malta'', Napoli, ...

'' (now also in the Museo de Capodimonte) and ''David Playing His Harp Before Saul'' (now in a private collection in New York). Nicola Spinosa, ''Mattia Preti. Tra Roma, Napoli e Malta'', Napoli, Electa, 1999, ISBN 978-8851001292, p. 174. It was then recorded after 1745 in the Colonna di Stigliano family collection, probably after being in the Vandeneynden collection, which was merged into the Colonna di Stigliano collection when Ferdinand van den Eynde's daughter

Giovanna Giovanna is an Italian feminine first name. It is the feminine counterpart of the masculine Giovanni, which in turn is the Italian form of John; it is thus the Italian equivalent of Jane, Joanna, Jeanne, etc. In Brazil, the feminine name Giovann ...

married Giuliano Colonna of Stigliano in 1688 (she also inherited Palazzo Zevallos from her father, renamed Palazzo Colonna di Stigliano after her marriage). The Italian state bought it and ''Absalom'' from Cecilia Colonna di Stigliano (granddaughter of Andrea Colonna di Stigliano, 1st Prince of Stigliano, himself grandson of Ferdinando Colonna of Stigliano, 2nd Prince of Sonnino, son of Giovanna Vandeneynden) and placed them both in their current home.

References

Bibliography

* Nicola Spinosa, ''Mattia Preti. Tra Roma, Napoli e Malta'', Napoli, Electa, 1999, ISBN 978-8851001292. * Nicola Spinosa, ''Pittura del Seicento a Napoli - da Mattia Preti a Luca Giordano, natura in posa'', Napoli, Arte'm, 2010. {{Mattia Preti Paintings by Mattia Preti 1660s paintings Paintings in the Museo di Capodimonte Paintings of Book of Daniel people