Gallery Label This painting probably represents Sapphira who, with her husband Ananias, held back some of the money raised for the early Christian community in Jerusalem. Both died when Saint Peter revealed their deception (Acts 5: 1–11). Sapphira appears in Dante's "Purgatory" as an example of Avarice. She is shown here holding a money bag, surrounded by jewels and other objects of her greed, while a skeleton menaces her from behind. A related drawing in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, includes other figures and suggests that the painting is a fragment.
Notes A drawing of the same subject, Avarice, with additional figures at the left, is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The drawing is one of a series of the Seven Deadly Sins that includes Lust (dated 1590) and Sloth (both Musée du Louvre, Paris), Envy and Vanity (both dated 1590, Kestner Museum, Hanover), and Gluttony (location unknown, at C. G. Boerner in 1935). It is possible that a drawing of Virtue battling the Vices (Albertina, Vienna) is also related to this series.
Provenance [Stair Sainty Matthiesen, London and New York, until 1985; sold to Seiler, Bradbury, and Friedman]; Eric Seiler and Darcy Bradbury, and Edward A. and Karen S. W. Friedman, New York (1985–91)
Exhibition History London. Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd.. "Around 1610: The Onset of the Baroque," June 14–August 16, 1985, no. 5.
References Jaynie Anderson in Around 1610: The Onset of the Baroque . Exh. cat., Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd. London, 1985, pp. 27–29, no. 5, ill. (color).in La pittura in Italia: il Seicento . revised and expanded ed. Milan, 1989, vol. 2, p. 787.From Studio to Studiolo: Florentine Draftmanship under the First Medici Grand Dukes . Exh. cat., Allen Memorial Art Museum. Oberlin, Ohio, 1991, p. 109.Jacopo Ligozzi: Le vedute del Sacro Monte della Verna, i dipinti di Poppi e Bibbiena . Exh. cat., Castello dei Conti Guidi. Poppi, 1992, pp. 28, 43 n. 105, fig. 18.
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