Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The fortieth day
Simeon is named once in the gospels, in Luke's second chapter. He is at the Temple when the infant is brought for the rite of purification, he takes the child in his arms, and he speaks the words that begin now let your servant depart in peace. The title of this work names him rather than the ceremony, which shifts the subject from the Presentation as a whole to the single old man holding a child.
Where it falls in the cycle
Forty days after the Nativity, after the Circumcision on the eighth day, and immediately before the flight into Egypt. It is also the first place in the narrative where the Passion is spoken aloud, since Simeon goes on to tell the mother that a sword will pierce her own soul. Cycles that run in order treat the scene as the turn from joy toward what follows.
The record
The catalogue gives Benjamin West, 1796, and the Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI, US. The dimensions are entered to the second decimal: 121.92 x 90.49 cm, upright. The style is recorded as Rococo and the artist as American. The subject fields class the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown. Nothing in the entry concerns a commission or an earlier owner.
Sources
1 references- West, Benjamin — Getty ULAN
Unknown artist
