Gaspare Diziani (school Of), The Death Of St. Joseph, Oil On Canvas

Gaspare Diziani (school of)
Venice, 18th century

The death of St. Joseph
Oil on canvas, cm. 60x45.5
Within a painted and lacquered wooden frame

The painting depicts one of the best known and most reproduced iconographic subjects in Italian painting between the 17th and 18th centuries. The death of Joseph (also called Transito or Trapasso) is a theme that finds ample space in Venetian painting of the eighteenth century also by the hand of great masters as, precisely, in the work proposed here and which can be traced to a skilled artist active in the circle of Gaspare Diziani in 18th century Venice.

St. Joseph is represented as an old man with a white beard, reflecting his advanced age at the time of his death. He is lying on a bed, surrounded by his family, angels and with the Father at the top of the composition. The Virgin is in the act of prayer behind him, almost hidden as to want to leave the scene to Jesus - represented here at a young age - who looks at his dying father with a blessing.
The scene is completed by a host of angels and praying figures, with a large candle and a lantern in the foreground to symbolize the divine light that guides the soul of St. Joseph to heaven. In the background on the right a glimpse of light, a door, accompanies the observer's gaze outwards in a typical Venetian landscape.

The work, in a very good state of conservation, relined, was the subject of an old restoration in the 1970s and bears on the back a cardboard applied with the attribution to Gaspare Diziani.