The painting Moses and the Daughters of Jethro depicts the episode in which the youthful Moses, having taken refuge among the Kenites aer killing an Egyptian, saved the daughters of the priest Jethro from the shepherds while they were taking their sheep to the well (Exodus 3.1). As a Pietro da Cortona’s work, this painting was exhibited in the Mostra della pittura italiana del Sei e Settecento, in the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence, in 1922 (p. 144, n. 756) and again in the 1947 Arte da Ital-Brasil exhibition in São Paulo. The correction of an attribution to Ferri was due to S. von Below, who in 1932 warned of the existence of an engraving deriving from this work, signed by Ferri. is led Briganti to attribute our work to the Roman artist. The attribution was reiterated by Laureati and Trezzani in the revision of Briganti’s monograph on Pietro da Cortona for the second edition of the work in 1982 (p. 394). Published in Rome by Gian Giacomo de’ Rossi (Rome, Instituto Nazionale per la Graca, inv. fc 69314), the etching in question was authored by Pietro Aquila (1677-1740) and bears the following inscription: “Cyrus Ferrus inv. et pinx”. The engraving also transcribes a dedication to Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, the great Maecenas of Rome during the second half of the 1700s, for whom the work may have been painted. It is not certain, however, that the work now at Masp is the one addressed, since another similar-sized replica of the work is conserved in the collections of the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma. It was published by Prosperi Valenti Rodino (1990, p. 96), who made no mention of the Masp painting nor of another replica then in a private collection, pointed out by G. Briganti (verbal communication, 1990). In any case, the possibility that the Masp work was once part of the Cardinal Pamphili’s collection should not be ruled out.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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