Id like to locate a specific painting of a court trial. This painting
is described in a memoir I was reading.

The painting is said to portray a Roman court house. We can see all
involved parties, the accused, the judges, the prosecutor and even the
families. It seems that the son of the accused, perhaps a child, is
holding the floor, in an attempt defend his fathers fate.

I have previously  asked the question on Google answers,
(http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=725273#a), but after
realizing what is involved in locating a painting and on the advice of
knowledgeable commenters I?m narrowing the question and increasing the
value.

Many more details of the viewing are recorded in the memoirs, and are
relayed in much detail in the previous post. However, as can been seen
from the previous post, theres a lot of confusion as to what really
happened. The important thing to bear in mind is locating the painting
itself, ie. an elaborately drawn court scene (Roman or not) with a son
(perhaps a child) as the focus. All the other details discussed in the
previous post, such as the painter, the location etc. etc. are to be
used as pointers that may or may not assist in finding the painting.

Its all quite complicated. Any help, both on this question and the
previous one, would be greatly appreciated.

There is a brief mention here of "A Child Testifying to Its Mother's
Innocence," by Titian:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizian

Greetings again,

A newspaper review of a new exhibit here suddenly let me wonder if the
"Raphael" in the memoirs might have been a misunderstanding of the
guide's mentioning "Pre-Raphaelites", an English art movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood

In Germany, this was preceded by the "Nazarene Movement", whose
artists had a similar style.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarene_movement
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarener_(Kunst)

The German Wikipedia site has, indeed, a painting that could maybe fit
the description of the court scene, though it does not included as
many persons and parties as the memoirs report:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Peter_von_Cornelius_002.jpg

If we may assume that this picture was in Berlin back then, a guide in
the German capital could be knowledgeable enough the relate the
Nazarenes with the English Pre-Raphaelites  - perhaps proudly claiming
that the English movement was just an off-shoot of the German one.

Although pure landscape paintings were not generally the subject of
either group, their idealized style could account for the bird's not
bending the stalk of grass.  (But a German peasant with an
accent/dialect that pronounced Raphael as "Chachael" doesn't ring a
bell with me.  Perhaps a Polish peasant?  Polish was spoken in the
eastern part of the Reich, and it would have been easy to laugh at a
Polish peasant's mispronunciation.  ??)

Reference to Pre-Raphaelites could account for a the author's
misunderstanding, his latching on to the name, since he recognized it,
and perhaps his thinking that it also applied to painting that wasn't
in that style.

Mostly speculation.  I looked at quite a few paintings, but couldn't
find any that were closer than that of Joseph and Pharao, which would
have been correctly identified and a subject familiar to everyone in
those days.

Perhaps this jogs someone else's thoughts.

Regards, Myoarin

Thanks Myoarin.

This is obviously moore difficult than i thought, but I havent given up.

Thanks again for all your insights.