{
"data": {
"id": 144255,
"accession_number": "1969.1",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "The Oath of Abraham\u2019s Servant, c. 1650\u201359. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Italian, 1609\u20131664). Oil on canvas; framed: 71.2 x 94 x 9 cm (28 1/16 x 37 x 3 9/16 in.); unframed: 56 x 78.4 cm (22 1/16 x 30 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1969.1",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The Oath of Abraham\u2019s Servant",
"creation_date": "c. 1650\u201359",
"creation_date_earliest": 1650,
"creation_date_latest": 1659,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Italy, 17th century"
],
"technique": "oil on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "P - Italian 16th & 17th Century",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 71.2 x 94 x 9 cm (28 1/16 x 37 x 3 9/16 in.); Unframed: 56 x 78.4 cm (22 1/16 x 30 7/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.712,
"height_inch": 28,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0625,
"width": 0.94,
"width_inch": 37,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"depth": 0.09,
"depth_inch": 3,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.5625
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.56,
"height_inch": 22,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0625,
"width": 0.784,
"width_inch": 30,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 301313,
"title": "Year in Review: 1969",
"description": "Year in Review: 1969. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 27-February 22, 1970).",
"opening_date": "1970-01-27T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "[Pinakos, New York], sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1969",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "The musical instrument at the left symbolizes love, foreshadowing the wedding the servant pledges to facilitate.",
"description": "This work has long been called Journey of a Patriarch in the belief that the artist intended no specific subject. The painting instead depicts a moment in the Old Testament book of Genesis. Abraham secures a pledge from his servant to find a wife for Abraham\u2019s son Isaac. The servant wears a zamt, a goatskin cap common in North Africa in the 1600s, here dyed an unusual shade of blue, a color associated with faith and trust, symbolizing his sacred oath.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60470179"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1969.1-the-oath-of-abrahams"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Durn, Tamara. \"The subject of G.B. Castiglione's Journey of a Patriarch identified?\" Essay, Case Western Reserve University.",
"page_number": "",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Richards, Louise S. \u201cA Painting and Two Drawings by Castiglione.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 57, no. 8 (November 1970): 272\u2013280.
Published as: Journey of a Patriarch",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 272-276, figs. 1, 2",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25152344"
},
{
"citation": "Percy, Ann. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque. 1971.",
"page_number": "40",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Louise d' Argencourt, and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Vol. III: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.",
"page_number": "326-327",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 141",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n161"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 326; Reproduced: p. 327",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Schloder, John E. Baroque Imagery. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1984.",
"page_number": "15, 81",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Goldfarb, Hilliard T. \u201cBoucher\u2019s \u2018Pastoral Scene with Family at Rest\u2019 and the Image of the Pastoral in Eighteenth-Century France.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 3 (March 1984): 82\u201389.
Published as: Journey of a Patriarch",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 84-85, fig. 7",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159852"
},
{
"citation": "Dillon, Gianvittorio. Il Grechetto: il genio di Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. Genova: Sagep, 1990.",
"page_number": "133",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Duffin, Ross. RIdIM/RCMI Inventory of Music Iconography. Vol. 8. New York: Research Center for Musical Iconography, 1991.",
"page_number": "no. 176, pp. 9, 37",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": "31",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Orlando, Anna, Francesco Rotatori, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. Gio. Benedetto Castiglione genovese: il Grechetto a Roma : committenza e opere. Genova : Sagep editori, 2022.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 220, no. 32",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1969.1",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1969.1/1969.1_web.jpg",
"width": "1263",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "811429",
"filename": "1969.1_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1969.1/1969.1_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2403",
"filesize": "5635847",
"filename": "1969.1_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1969.1/1969.1_full.tif",
"width": "5500",
"height": "3887",
"filesize": "64168308",
"filename": "1969.1_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [
{
"date_created": "2011-02-22T19:45:24",
"annotation": "",
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/alternate/1969.1/1969.1_alt0_web.jpg",
"width": "1238",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "894618"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/alternate/1969.1/1969.1_alt0_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2452",
"filesize": "7908073"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/alternate/1969.1/1969.1_alt0_full.tif",
"width": "6216",
"height": "4484",
"filesize": "83644780"
}
},
{
"date_created": "2008-06-23T18:55:11",
"annotation": "",
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/alternate/1969.1/1969.1_alt1_web.jpg",
"width": "1176",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "867518"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/alternate/1969.1/1969.1_alt1_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2582",
"filesize": "6526538"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/alternate/1969.1/1969.1_alt1_full.tif",
"width": "4056",
"height": "3080",
"filesize": "37521936"
}
}
],
"creditline": "Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 144255,
"creators": [
{
"id": 2079,
"description": "Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Italian, 1609\u20131664)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1609",
"death_year": "1664",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1969-01-22T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1650,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1650\u201359",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": true,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Journey of a Patriarch"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:50:29.465000"
}
}