Jacob and Rachel

The subject is a single moment from Genesis. Jacob, arriving in a strange country, comes upon shepherds waiting by a covered well, and when Rachel appears with her father's sheep he heaves the heavy stone off the well mouth himself and waters the flock, then tells her they are kin. Solimena treats the episode as an excuse for a piece of countryside. Sheep and other farm animals crowd the foreground, the landscape opens behind, and the biblical drama almost dissolves into a pastoral. He painted it in his maturity, around 1705, with the firm modelling and sharp contrasts of light that his Venetian admirers prized. It is the companion to his Rebekah at another well, the two stories set a generation apart. Both canvases were cleaned and restored in 2009 before returning to the walls of the Accademia.