STEPHEN ONGPIN FINE ART
Cover: Francesco Paolo Michetti (1851-1929) Head of a Young Woman in Profile (Portrait of Annunziata Cirmignani) No.53
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RENAISSANCE TO FUTURISM A SELECTION OF ITALIAN DRAWINGS 1500 -1920
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Italian drawings of all periods have always been a particular love of mine, and I am delighted to be able to present this interesting and varied selection of works from the stock of the gallery, together with a handful of drawings from private collections. This is the first time I have devoted an entire catalogue to Italian drawings, and alongside works by well known artists from the 16th through the early 20th centuries, I have included fine examples of drawings by artists perhaps best known to scholars and connoisseurs. I have also chosen to illustrate a number of anonymous drawings of high quality. This catalogue includes only a selection of some of the Italian drawings we have available, however, and many others can be found on the gallery’s website. I am very grateful to my wife Laura for her advice and constant support while I was writing the entries for this catalogue. I also wish to thank my assistant Julie Frouge for her invaluable help in all aspects of preparing this catalogue, as well as Sarah Ricks for her endless patience and fortitude in colour proofing the images. I would also like to thank the following people for their help and advice in the preparation of this catalogue and the drawings included herein: Christopher Adams, Olivia Baczynski, Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, Deborah Bates, Babette Bohn, Sonja Brink, Julian Brooks, Toby Campbell, Hugo Chapman, Miles Chappell, Marco Ciampolini, Glynn Clarkson, Caroline Corrigan, Janet Cox-Rearick, Nathalie Diot, Henrike Dustmann, David Ekserdjian, Ted Few, Cheryl and Gino Franchi, Anne-Claire Gallet, the late Mario di Giampaolo, Laura Giles, Laura Giuntini, Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Lavinia Harrington, Dean Hearn, Lesley Hill, Amanda Hilliam, Paul Joannides, Ilse Jung, Catherine Loisel, Mark McDonald, Michael Mahoney, John Marciari, Suz Massen, Marie McFeely, Martin Moeller, Louise Morgan, Mary Newcome Schleier, Monica Arellano Ongpin, Guy Peppiatt, Elizabeth Pilliod, Cristiana Romalli, Bernd Schnarr, Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Susan Sloman, Lara Smith-Bosanquet, Martin Sonnabend, Julien Stock, David M. Stone, Holly Taylor, John Tilford, Todd-White Photography, Dino Tomasso, Jorge Virgili, Sarah Vowles, Joanna Watson, Aidan Weston-Lewis and Jenny Willings. Stephen Ongpin
Dimensions are given in millimetres and inches, with height before width. Unless otherwise noted, paper is white or whitish. Please note that drawings are sold mounted but not framed. High-resolution digital images of the drawings are available on request. All enquiries should be addressed to Julie Frouge or Stephen Ongpin at Stephen Ongpin Fine Art Ltd. 6 Mason’s Yard Duke Street St James’s London SW1Y 6BU Tel. [+44] (20) 7930-8813 or [+44] (7710) 328-627 Fax [+44] (20) 7839-1504 e-mail: info@stephenongpinfineart.com website: www.stephenongpin.com
RENAISSANCE TO FUTURISM ITALIAN DRAWINGS 1500 -1920
Presented by
STEPHEN ONGPIN
2 015
1. RIDOLFO DI DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO Florence 1483-1561 Florence The Virgin and Child Pen and brown ink, the outlines pricked for transfer. Laid down on an 18th century English mount. 112 x 57 mm. (4 3/ 8 x 2 1/4 in.) PROVENANCE: Jonathan Richardson Senior, London (Lugt 2183, and on his mount); Probably his sale, London, Christopher Cock, 22 January to 8 February 1747; Included in an album of drawings compiled in England in the mid-18th century; Ray Livingston Murphy, New York1; His estate sale, London, Christie’s, 12 December 1985, lot 152 (as Fra Bartolommeo); Private collection. LITERATURE: William M. Griswold, ‘Early Drawings by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio’, Master Drawings, Autumn 1989, No.3, pp.218-219 and pl.25b; Roberta J. M. Olson, ed., The Art of Drawing: Selections from the Wheaton College Collection, exhibition catalogue, Norton, MA, 1997, p.44, under no.52; London, Sotheby’s, Old Master & British Drawings, 4 July 2012, p.9, under lot 2. The son of the eminent painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, who died when he was eleven, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio continued his training with his uncle Davide, who had taken over the family workshop. Vasari noted that Ridolfo also studied with Fra Bartolommeo, whose influence is evident in much of his early work. Ridolfo soon gained a measure of independence within the Ghirlandaio bottega, and several paintings of the early 1500’s commissioned from Davide would appear to be by his nephew. His earliest documented painting, however, is a Virgin of the Sacred Girdle in the Duomo in Prato, commissioned in 1507 and completed in 1509. As an independent artist, Ridolfo enjoyed a long and successful career, with a number of significant public commissions in Florence, notably the fresco decoration of the Cappella della Signoria in the Palazzo Vecchio, begun in 1514. He produced altarpieces and frescoes for churches in and around Florence, and was also active as a portrait painter. Despite his lengthy career, drawings by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio are rare, and only a handful of drawings have been firmly attributed to him. The present sheet would appear to be an early work by the artist, datable to the first years of the 16th century. With fine penwork applied with regular hatching and crosshatching, this small drawing is typical of the artist’s draughtsmanship, which ultimately derives from the example of his father Domenico. The drawing also displays the influence on the younger Ghirlandaio of the pen drawings of Fra Bartolommeo, to whom it was once attributed. Indeed, the composition is derived from a drawing of The Virgin and Child by Fra Bartolommeo (fig.1) in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin2. A stylistically comparable pen drawing by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio of A Bishop and a Priest is in the collection of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts3, and it has been suggested that both drawings may have been trimmed from the same sheet. Among other comparable drawings by Ridolfo is a Virgin and Child with Saints Onofrius and Augustine in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum in Budapest4 and a Saint Sebastian formerly in the Habich collection in Kassel5.
1.
actual size
2 FLORENTINE SCHOOL Circa 1530 Study of a Male Nude seen from Behind Red chalk. Indistinctly inscribed in brown ink at the lower right. Numbered 296 in red chalk on the verso. 375 x 228 mm. (14 3/4 x 9 in.) This fine drawing would appear to be the work of an artist active in Florence in the first half of the 16th century. Although stylistic similarities may be noted with the red chalk drawings of such Florentine artists as Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) and Baccio Bandinelli (1488-1560), a firm attribution for the present sheet remains to be found. The pose of the figure in the present sheet would seem to be based on a fragmentary Roman marble copy of an ancient Greek bronze sculpture known as the Apollo Sauroktonos (‘Apollo the Lizard-Killer’) by the sculptor Praxiteles1. Today in the Museo Archaeologico Nazionale in Naples, the Roman marble torso was part of the collection of antiquities formed by Egidio and Fabio Sassi in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The sculpture was placed in a niche, with its back facing outward, along the end wall of the courtyard of the Casa Sassi, on the Via del Governo Vecchio in Rome. This is how it appears in a well-known drawing of the sculpture court of the Casa Sassi by Marten van Heemskerck (fig.1), drawn around 1532-1536 and today in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin.2 The sculptures of the Sassi collection were sold to the Farnese family in 1546, and most are today in Naples. The headless Roman marble torso in the Sassi collection was widely copied by artists in the 16th century, including Michelangelo, Raphael and Parmigianino. It was particularly admired, as David Ekserdjian has noted, ‘for the muscular serpentinata of the back – precisely the feature which so captivated all the artists who were inspired by the marble – [which] is its most remarkable characteristic.’3 Although the legs of the marble torso in the Casa Sassi ended at the knee, the artist of the present sheet has, like many other copyists, completed the lower legs of the figure according to his imagination.
1.
detail of fig.1
3 PIETRO BUONACCORSI, called PERINO DEL VAGA Florence 1501-1547 Rome Caesar on the River Aoös Pen and brown ink and brown wash, extensively heightened with white, an underdrawing in black chalk, with framing lines in brown ink. Inscribed Cesar Ini…[M]iro il fiume…I aniene(?) in brown ink in the lower margin and, in a different hand (probably Lanier), Polidoro in brown ink in the lower right margin. 137 x 152 mm. (5 3/ 8 x 6 in.) PROVENANCE: Nicholas Lanier, London (Lugt 2886)1; Probably John Evelyn, London2; By descent to J. H. C. Evelyn and Major Peter Evelyn; Their posthumous sale, London, Christie’s, 6 July 1977, part of lot 1 (as Circle of Perino del Vaga); Private collection, England; Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 28 January 1999, lot 54 (as Andrea Semino) [withdrawn]; Anonymous sale, London, Phillips, 13 December 2000, lot 121 (as attributed to Pirro Ligorio); Mia Weiner, New York; Private collection, Madrid. LITERATURE: Paul Joannides, ‘Some New Drawings by Perino del Vaga’, in Elena Parma, ed., Perino del Vaga: prima, durante, dopo. Atti delle Giornate Internazionali di Studio, Genova 26-27 maggio 2001, Palazzo Doria “del Principe”, Genoa, 2004, pp.18-19, fig.7; Elena Parma, ‘Introduzione’, in Parma, ed., ibid., 2004, p.8; Dominique Cordellier, Louis-Antoine Prat and Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken, ed., Maîtres du dessin européen du XVIe au XXe siècle: La collection Georges Pébereau, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2009-2010, p.20, under no.2, fig.1 (entry by Dominique Cordellier). Undoubtedly one of the most gifted draughtsmen of the 16th century, Perino del Vaga’s career can be divided into three main periods, each of about nine or ten years. His training and early independent career in Rome lasted until the sack of the city in 1527, and was followed by a period in Genoa between 1528 and 1537, before a final stay in Rome from around 1538 until his death in 1547. Perino began his career as an assistant to Raphael at the Vatican logge in 1518, and with Giovanni da Udine decorated the Sala dei Pontefici in the Vatican in 1521. In 1524 he worked on the fresco decoration of the Cappella Pucci in the church of the Trinità dei Monti, as well as a cycle of frescoes for the Palazzo Baldassini and paintings for San Marcello al Corso and Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Following the Sack of Rome in 1527 Perino settled in Genoa, where he was employed by Prince Andrea Doria on the extensive decoration of the Palazzo Doria on the outskirts of the city – a project which occupied the artist for several years – and also received commissions for religious and secular paintings. Although he stayed less than ten years in Genoa, his influence on the local school of painters was significant. Perino returned in the late 1530’s to Rome, where he gained the patronage of the Farnese Pope Paul III and working on the decoration of the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Sala Regia of the Vatican. According to Giorgio Vasari, he spent much of the last few years of his career ‘having to draw day and night and to meet the demands of the [Vatican] Palace, and, among other things, to make the designs of embroideries, of engravings for banner-makers, and of innumerable ornaments required by the caprice of Farnese and other cardinals and noblemen.’3 Characterized by considerable inventiveness, range and skill, the drawings of Perino del Vaga establish him as one of the most gifted draughtsmen of the 16th century in Italy. Vasari rated him very highly (‘the best and most finished draughtsman that there was among all who were drawing in Rome’), and noted that he drew constantly. His drawings range from sheets of rapid sketches to elaborate and highly finished figure and composition studies. The majority of Perino’s drawings are studies in pen and ink; a medium he seems to have preferred for its fluidity and expressiveness. His drawings often serve as the only record of damaged or destroyed commissions, and relatively few examples can be related to surviving works. This drawing was first attributed to Perino del Vaga by Paul Joannides in 2000, and published by him four years later. The drawing, which would appear to depict a scene from Roman history, is unconnected to any surviving painting or fresco by the artist. Although Joannides had identified the subject of this drawing
actual size
as Caesar Crossing the Rubicon, Dominique Cordellier has recently recognized that the composition in fact depicts Caesar on the River Aoös, another episode from the Civil War. The river Aoös (also called the Anius or Aoüs), which flows through Greece and Albania, is here personified by a river god reclining at the lower left of the composition. As recorded in Plutarch’s life of Julius Caesar, ‘He in the meantime was posted in Apollonia, but had not an army with him able to fight the enemy, the forces from Brundisium being so long in coming, which put him to great suspense and embarrassment what to do. At last he resolved upon a most hazardous experiment, and embarked, without any one’s knowledge, in a boat of twelve oars, to cross over to Brundisium, though the sea was at that time covered with a vast fleet of the enemies. He got on board in the night time, in the dress of a slave, and throwing himself down like a person of no consequence, lay along at the bottom of the vessel. The river Anius was to carry them down to sea, and there used to blow a gentle gale every morning from the land, which made it calm at the mouth of the river, by driving the waves forward; but this night there had blown a strong wind from the sea, which overpowered that from the land, so that where the river met the influx of the sea-water and the opposition of the waves, it was extremely rough and angry; and the current was beaten back with such a violent swell, that the master of the boat could not make good his passage, but ordered his sailors to take about and return. Caesar, upon this, discovers himself, and taking the man by the hand, who was surprised to see him there, said, “Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Caesar and his fortune in your boat.” The mariners, when they heard that, forgot the storm, and laying all their strength to their oars, did what they could to force their way down the river. But when it was to no purpose, and the vessel now took in much water, Caesar finding himself in such danger in the very mouth of the river, much against his will permitted the master to turn back. When he was come to land, his soldiers ran to him in a multitude reproaching him for what he had done, and indignant that he should think himself not strong enough to get a victory by their sole assistance, but must disturb himself, and expose his life for those who were absent, as if he could not trust those who were with him.’4 A closely related drawing appears on the recto of a double-sided sheet of small compositional sketches and figure studies by Perino del Vaga formerly in the Reynolds, Calando and Lebel collections and most recently in the collection of the late Georges Pébereau in Paris5. The lower sketch on the recto of the Pébereau sheet (fig.1) is clearly preparatory for the composition of the present drawing, and the two are very similar in size and scale, with the sketch on the former measuring approximately 136 x 182 mm. The present sheet must have been worked up from the preliminary sketch on the Pébereau drawing, although there may have been other, intervening studies6.
1.
While the sketch of Caesar on the River Aoös on the Pébereau drawing shows Perino at his lightest and most fluent, the present sheet is a carefully worked-up modello, with strong and decisive linework. The differences in the composition of this drawing and that in the Pébereau collection mainly involve the placement of the figures, notably the oarsman and the master of the boat, while the empty stern of the boat in the later drawing serves as a visual platform for the gestures of Caesar’s astonished soldiers. The forms are carefully modelled with white heightening, delicately and precisely applied with the tip of the brush, which serves to emphasize the relief nature of the composition. The overall effect is inspired by Roman sarcophagus reliefs, and it would seem likely that this drawing was intended for a relief-like composition, probably in grisaille. An obvious conceptual link may be made with such works as Perino’s large monochrome canvas of The Crossing of the Red Sea in the Brera in Milan7, painted in 1522. Apart from the related sketch for Caesar on the River Aoös, the drawing in the Pébereau collection includes compositional sketches for two other narrative scenes, probably all from the life of Caesar and intended for a series of such episodes8. Although no such painted decoration by Perino del Vaga survives, a further quick sketch on the verso of the Pébereau drawing may, as Joannides has pointed out, provide a clue as to the purpose of these drawings; it shows a design for a painted frieze, with alternating square and oblong compartments divided from one another by either paired putti or putti holding shields9. It would seem probable, therefore, that the present sheet, like the three historical scenes studied in the Pébereau drawing, is a design for a painted composition intended to be placed within this planned frieze. Although the dating of the present sheet is difficult to establish with any precision – not unusual in the work of an artist whose graphic chronology remains notoriously unstable – it would seem to have been made fairly early in Perino’s career. While the related Pébereau drawing has been dated to Perino’s Genoese period, none of the sketches it contains can be connected with any work planned or executed by him in Genoa. Furthermore, the developed drawings produced by Perino for secular projects in Genoa are lighter in handling, freer in their application of wash and more simplified in form than the present sheet. It may also be noted that the facial types of the soldiers clustered in the right background recall those of Gianfrancesco Penni, Perino’s superior in the studio of Raphael; these facial types appear to have dropped out of the artist’s repertoire by the end of his first Roman period. Joannides has therefore suggested that the present sheet was drawn before Perino’s move to Genoa in 1527. The closest analogies in style and technique are with such drawings of the early 1520’s by Perino as the Roman Soldiers Bringing the Spoils of War before Caesar in the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth10 and the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand in the Albertina in Vienna11, in which the application of heightening in white bodycolour is closely comparable12. This visual sophistication evident in the design of this drawing of Caesar on the River Aoös, and the related sketches of Caesarian narratives on the Pébereau sheet of studies, would suggest that the unknown project for which they were preparatory was the result of a commission from a patron of refined taste and knowledge, perhaps someone at the papal court in Rome. Such a frieze of scenes from the life of Caesar can well be imagined as an apt decorative scheme for the façade or interior of a Roman palace13.
detail of fig.1
4 GIOVANNI BATTISTA NALDINI Fiesole 1535-1591 Florence or JACOPO CARUCCI, called PONTORMO Pontorme 1494-1557 Florence A Standing Male Nude, Holding onto a Ring and Looking Upwards Pen and brown ink, over faint traces of an underdrawing in black chalk. Another study of the same figure, in pen and brown ink over a black chalk underdrawing, on the verso. Inscribed Michel-ange in pencil on the verso. Made up at the lower right and upper left corners. 403 x 245 mm. (15 7/ 8 x 9 5/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Auguste Desperet, Paris (Lugt 721)1; His posthumous sale, Paris, Clément, 7-10 June 1865, probably lot 16 (as Baccio Bandinelli, 'Etude d’un homme nu debout, avec une seconde étude au verso d’après le même modèle; à la plume’); Jean-Pierre-Victor Maziès, Paris and Auch (Lugt 1919)2; Probably his sale, Paris, S. Mayer, 18 May 1887 (probably as attributed to Michelangelo); P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1993; John Gaines, Lexington, Kentucky; His (anonymous) sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 26 January 2000, lot 52 (as Naldini); Private collection, Florida. LITERATURE: Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo, Milan, 1994, p.13, note 24. The attribution of this large and impressive double-sided drawing has been a matter of some scholarly debate. It would certainly appear to be by the same hand as a closely related pen and ink study of a nude model in a similar pose (fig.1), on the recto of a double-sided drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin3. First published by Fritz Goldschmidt in 1915 as by Jacopo da Pontormo, the Berlin drawing was
1.
recto
subsequently attributed to the same artist by Hermann Voss in 1920 and Bernard Berenson in 1938. In his groundbreaking book, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Berenson noted of the male nude on one side of the Berlin sheet that ‘The recto is not easy to recognize as P[ontormo], the hatching being so painfully Michelangelesque. And yet the swing of the contours seems to speak for him besides the fact that the other side is certainly by him.’4 Indeed, the black chalk study on the verso of the Berlin drawing5 is unquestionably a preparatory study by Pontormo for one of the putti in his lunette fresco of Vertumnus and Pomona in the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano, painted in the early 1520’s. In this respect, it may be significant that the small pen sketch at the lower left corner of the recto of the present sheet (fig.2) is closely related to three preparatory studies by Pontormo for the fresco at Poggio a Caiano, all in the Uffizi and drawn in chalk6, each of which depicts a youth shielding his eyes (fig.3). This seated figure does not, however, appear in the final lunette fresco. A supremely inventive draughtsman, Jacopo da Pontormo worked almost exclusively in chalk and only a handful of drawings in pen and ink by him are known. Most of his drawings are studies of single figures, often nude, and many appear to be preparatory studies for paintings, although this is by no means always the case. Although Pontormo was a fairly prolific draughtsman (Vasari mentions ‘molti disegni, cartoni, e modelli di terra bellissimi’ left in his studio after his death), his drawings remain quite scarce outside the Uffizi in Florence, which houses the vast majority of his drawn oeuvre. Indeed, relatively few drawings by this seminal Mannerist artist are today to be found in public collections outside Italy. Although long attributed to Pontormo – and despite the fact that the chalk study on the verso is unquestionably by him – the male nude on the recto of the Berlin drawing was reattributed to Pontormo’s pupil Giovanni Battista Naldini in the 1960’s, first by Janet Cox-Rearick in 1964 and again by Paola Barocchi, in an article on Naldini’s drawings published the following year7. In her catalogue raisonné of the drawings of Pontormo, Cox-Rearick noted that ‘A small number of drawings in pen and bistre occur at irregular intervals before 1530 in Pontormo’s oeuvre, but their appearance is quite incidental
2. detail of recto (enlarged)
3.
verso
and the potential of this medium was never developed.’8 As she believed that Pontormo only rarely drew in pen and ink alone, Cox-Rearick preferred to attribute the recto of the Berlin drawing to his disciple, Naldini. She went on to write of the recto of the Berlin sheet that, ‘Although it is the reverse of an authentic study, it is difficult to accept this ill-proportioned figure and crudely hatched technique as Pontormo’s. In Pontormo’s few pen studies pen was used for accents, or to define the structure of a figure under a wash, but never as an instrument for modeling form...this drawing is probably by Naldini.’9 Bernard Berenson, in his magisterial survey of Florentine drawing, wrote that ‘drawings by Naldini are numerous, and so full of spirit, so pictorial, so lively in execution that an hour spent looking over his albums at the Uffizi must count among the pleasures of the student of cinquecento Florentine draughtsmanship.’10 A pupil and assistant of Jacopo da Pontormo from 1549 until his master’s death in 1557, Giambattista Naldini was profoundly influenced by him. Throughout his career, the underlying Pontormismo of his style remained always evident, and this was especially true of his draughtsmanship. According to the biographer Filippo Baldinucci, Naldini inherited Pontormo’s drawings after his death, and was, as a draughtsman, steeped in the style of his master: ‘[Naldini] disegnò bravamente, ed alquanto in sul gusto del suo gran maestro Jacopo da Pontormo, ma con un tocco più replicato, con matita sputata, ed in sull’ appiccature fortemente aggravata.’11 Naldini’s early drawings include a number of figure studies after Pontormo12, and it cannot be argued that the present sheet is certainly indebted to the work of the elder artist. As an early 20th century scholar noted of Naldini, ‘This brilliant young draughtsman imitated chiefly, and with extraordinary ease and bravura, his master’s early manner...It is not surprising, then, that Pontormo’s early drawings have at times been confused with Naldini’s, or that, still more frequently, Naldini’s have been catalogued as Jacopo’s.’13 Along with the Berlin drawing, Janet Cox-Rearick and Paola Barocchi identified a small group of Pontormesque drawings in pen and brown ink, all in the Uffizi and traditionally attributed to Pontormo, as probable works by Giambattista Naldini14. (The present sheet may in particular be compared stylistically with one of these drawings; a study of Five Putti15, in which the treatment of eyes and the pen hatching is similar to that of the standing male nude here depicted.) It should be noted, however, that more recently – in Uffizi inventory catalogues published in 1986 and 1991 by Annamaria Petrioli Tofani – this group of pen and ink drawings in the Uffizi have been given back to Pontormo; an opinion seconded in the case of at least one of the drawings – a compositional study of God Commanding Noah to Build the Ark – by both Carlo Falciani and the late Edmund Pillsbury16. Similarly, Elizabeth Pilliod has preferred to attribute the pen drawings in the Uffizi, as well as the present sheet, to Jacopo da Pontormo himself17. As she further points out, the addition of a miniscule study at the lower left corner of the recto of this drawing (fig.2) is a highly characteristic feature of Pontormo’s draughtsmanship, but is not found in the drawings of Naldini. Although Philippe Costamagna has rejected the attribution of the Uffizi pen and ink drawings to Pontormo, he has chosen to reserve judgment on both the present sheet and its counterpart in Berlin18, which, it should further be noted, has always retained its traditional attribution to Pontormo. Distinctly Michelangelesque, the pose of the figure in this drawing may have been inspired by such muscular nudes by the master as those in his lost Battle of Cascina fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, painted in 1504-1505 but destroyed a few years later. A more direct influence may have been the pose of David, bending down to pick up the head of Goliath, in a small engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi of David and Goliath, which has been dated to c.1515-151619.
5 Circle of GIROLAMO FRANCESCO MARIA MAZZOLA, called PARMIGIANINO Parma 1503-1540 Casalmaggiore A Standing Satyr in the Pose of a Telamon Pen and brown ink and brown wash. Irregularly trimmed and laid down on an 18th century English mount, with the edges of the sheet made up. Inscribed (by Richardson) Polidoro. in brown ink on the mount. Inscribed Cholmondeley in brown ink on the reverse of the mount. Inscribed with Richardson’s shelfmark CC.64. / k in brown ink on the reverse of the mount. Further inscribed (by Barnard) with his shelfmark and dimensions J:B N.588. / 7 1/4 by 2 3/4. in brown ink on the reverse of the mount. 183 x 70 mm. (7 1/ 8 x 2 3/4 in.) [including backing sheet]. PROVENANCE: Sir Peter Lely, London (Lugt 2092); Jonathan Richardson Senior, London (Lugt 2183 and on his mount); Probably his sale, London, Christopher Cock, 22 January to 8 February 1747; (bt. Cholmondeley?); George Cholmondeley, 3rd Earl of Cholmondeley, London (according to an inscription on the reverse of the mount); Probably his anonymous sale (‘A Catalogue of the Genuine, Entire and Capital Collection of Drawings of a Person of Distinction’), London, Langford, 21 March 1763 onwards; John Barnard, London (Lugt 1419), with his numbering (Lugt 1420) on the reverse of the mount; Probably his sale, London, Greenwood’s, 16-24 February 1787; Benjamin West, London (Lugt 419); Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 21 January 2003, lot 22 (as Attributed to Annibale Carracci); Jacques Hollander, Ohain, Belgium. The subject of this drawing may have been loosely inspired by the famous pair of antique statues of bearded Pans or satyrs serving as telamons, known as the Della Valle satyrs, which were rediscovered in Rome in the 15th century1. First recorded in the collection of the Della Valle family in Rome in 1490 and used to decorate one of their homes, the statues were much copied by artists in the 16th and 17th centuries. Already described in 1513 as ‘ancient statues of the greatest beauty’, the Della Valle satyrs were acquired by Cardinal Albani, and were installed in the Capitoline Museum in Rome in 1734. As Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny have noted, ‘[The] two armless Satyrs carrying baskets of fruit on their heads were among the most frequently drawn of all antiquities in the city.’2 Attributions to artists in the circle of Parmigianino, Giulio Romano (c.1499-1546), and Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) have previously been suggested for this fine sheet. The drawing has a long and illustrious provenance, and bears the collector’s marks of several prominent British collectors of the 17th and 18th centuries. The first known owner of the present sheet was the portrait painter Sir Peter Lely (16181680), whose renowned collection of nearly 10,000 drawings, the largest ever seen in England up to that time, was dispersed at auction in 1688 and 1694. The drawing then passed into the collection of another artist, Jonathan Richardson, Senior (1667-1745), who over a period of some fifty years assembled a superb collection of nearly five thousand drawings, mostly Italian works of the 16th and 17th centuries. Richardson’s extensive collection of drawings was organized by school and date, and were further classified with a complex system of shelfmarks, such as those found on the reverse of the mount of this drawing. According to an inscription on the 18th century mount, this drawing then entered the collection of George, Earl of Cholmondeley (1703-1770), although it does not bear his collector’s mark. Cholmondeley’s collection was sold in 1763 to pay his debts, and this drawing was then acquired by John Barnard (d.1784), who usually signed the drawings he owned with his initials, as with the present example. Numbering around 1,100 sheets, Barnard’s collection of drawings and prints was sold at auction in 1787, when, as was noted in the preface to the sale catalogue: ‘a more capital collection was never offered to the Public or more worthy the Attention of the learned Connoisseurs’. The drawing may have been acquired at the Barnard sale by the history painter Benjamin West (1738-1820), who succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy and, like him, was an avid collector of drawings. West’s collection was largely dispersed in two posthumous sales in London in 1820.
6 CHERUBINO ALBERTI Borgo San Sepolcro 1553-1615 Rome Recto: Study of Legs and an Arm Verso: Torso of a Man Holding a Sword, and a Study of Legs Black and red chalk. The verso a counterproof in black chalk1. 228 x 166 mm. (9 x 6 1/ 2 in.) PROVENANCE: Jean-François Baroni, Paris; P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1995; Pierre de Charmant, Geneva; His sale, Paris, Christie’s, 21 March 2002, lot 29. A painter and engraver, Cherubino Alberti was born into a family of artists. As a printmaker, he produced around 180 engravings – mostly reproductive works after Michelangelo, Raphael, the Zuccari and other artists – in the 1570’s and early 1580’s, after which he devoted himself mainly to painting. Often working alongside his brother Giovanni, Cherubino was admired for his skills as a painter of di sotto in su ceiling decorations, a talent he employed in several Roman churches. The two brothers worked together often, notably on the decoration of the Sala Clementina in the Vatican, painted between 1596 and 1604, and the sacristy of San Giovanni in Laterano, completed in 1602. Cherubino’s last major papal commission was the decoration of the vault of the Aldobrandini chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, completed in 1610. Both sides of this sheet of studies would appear to be after Antique or Renaissance sculptures, and indeed the position of the legs on the recto are very close to the Hellenistic sculpture known as the Dancing Faun (fig.1) in the Uffizi2. Cherubino produced several drawn copies after the work of earlier artists, often in a combination of red and black chalk, and a number of stylistically comparable drawings of this type by him are found in an album of drawings by various members of the Alberti family, in the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome3. Similar studies of arms are also found in a sketchbook of drawings by Cherubino, sold at auction in 19764.
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verso
recto (actual size)
7 ITALIAN SCHOOL 16th Century a. Two Studies of Birds and a Partial Study of a Third Oil on paper, over an underdrawing in pen and ink visible on the verso. A made up section at the lower right corner. The corners of the sheet cut and the whole sheet backed. 205 x 142 mm. (8 x 5 5/ 8 in.) b. Five Studies of Birds Oil on paper, over an underdrawing in pen and ink visible on the verso. The corners of the sheet cut and the whole sheet backed. 262 x 174 mm. (10 3/ 8 x 6 7/ 8 in.) Watermark: Unidentified object (a heart?) in a circle, with initials below. The two birds depicted in the first of these drawings would seem to be a barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) at the left and a northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) at the right. The five birds shown in the second drawing may be tentatively identified as a barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), which is depicted both at rest and in flight, as well as a European turtle dove (Steptopelia turtur) and what may be an unusually coloured Eurasian blue tit (Parus caeruleus), together with what appears to be a wagtail (Motacilla). Drawings of this type have often been tentatively attributed to the painter and stuccatore Giovanni da Udine (1487-1561), a pupil and assistant of Raphael who, as a draughtsman, was particularly known for his studies of birds. A group of similar drawings of birds, attributed to Giovanni da Udine by the early 18th century French collector and connoiseur Pierre Crozat, is in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm1. The present pair of drawings are, however, somewhat less refined in execution than those in Stockholm. A number of comparable studies of birds, dating from the late 16th century in Italy, were once part of the collection of drawings known as the Museo Cartaceo, or Paper Museum, assembled by the scholar and collector Cassiano dal Pozzo in the 17th century. One such example, a drawing in watercolour and gouache of a Great tit (Parus major) formerly in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle and today in a private collection2, is closely related to a sheet of studies of birds in the Uffizi in Florence3. Other 16th century drawings of birds from dal Pozzo’s collection can also be related to similar drawings in the Uffizi, which holds a number of studies of birds of this type, attributed to an anonymous Venetian artist of the mid 16th century4. As Henrietta McBurney has noted, these ‘form a group that has been attributed most commonly to Giovanni da Udine, but also to Pordenone and to the “sixteenth-century Venetian school.”’5.
a.
b.
8 JACOPO NEGRETTI, called PALMA GIOVANE Venice c.1548-1628 Venice The Fall of the Rebel Angels Pen and brown ink and brown wash, with touches of white heightening, over traces of an underdrawing in black chalk. Made up at the corners and laid down. Inscribed Palma in brown ink at the lower right corner, and inscribed Mr de Menthon in pencil on the old backing board. 235 x 261 mm. (9 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.) PROVENANCE: Robert Udny, London and Teddington, Middlesex (Lugt 2248)1; His sale, London, T. Philipe and Scott, 4-10 May 1803, part of lot 305 (‘JACOPO PALMA,. il giovine – Ven…Three - the fall of the angels, octagon, for a cieling [sic], pen and bistre, on brown paper; and two subjects of the Madona [sic] with saints, one pen and bistre, the other red chalk and bistre’); Marie Marignane, Paris and Nice (Lugt 1848)2; Comte [René?] de Menthon, Paris; By descent to a private collection, France. Known as Palma Giovane to distinguish him from his great-uncle, the painter Palma Vecchio, Jacopo Negretti studied in Pesaro, Urbino and Rome. On his return to Venice in 1573 he may have worked in the studio of Titian, completing the Pietà left unfinished at the master’s death in 1576. To the influence of Titian was added that of Tintoretto and Veronese, which Palma combined with his experiences of Roman Mannerism to create his own distinctive, painterly style. A prolific artist, Palma Giovane enjoyed a long career and received a large number of important commissions in Venice, particularly after the deaths of Tintoretto and Veronese. As well as providing altarpieces and ceiling paintings for numerous Venetian churches, he painted a series of pictures for the Ospedaletto dei Crociferi between 1583 and 1592 – a rare example in Venice of an entire cycle of paintings entrusted to one artist alone – and contributed to the extensive redecoration of the Palazzo Ducale. By the beginning of the 17th century Palma was firmly established as the leading painter in Venice, heading a large and busy workshop, and receiving commissions from patrons throughout Italy. Working mainly in pen and ink, Palma Giovane was an inexhaustible draughtsman, and more drawings by him survive than by any other Venetian artist of the Cinquecento. As the 17th century biographer Carlo Ridolfi wrote of the artist, ‘the drawings which he made in various techniques from the Old and the New Testament and from which he drew inspiration for his compositions were innumerable, and he turned out also many drawings just by caprice. Hardly had the table cloth been removed after his meals when he asked for the pencil, all the time formulating some idea, and many of such drawings still exist.’3 Palma seems to have drawn for pleasure as much as to prepare his paintings, and many of his drawings cannot be related to known works. His drawings have long been admired by collectors; as the 18th century French connoisseur Antoine-Joseph Dézallier d’Argenville wrote of him, ‘There is nothing more spirited than his drawings: his pen…is fine & light; it gives off imaginative fireworks, a vivacity of genius that has few equals.’4 Although no related painting is known, the octagonal shape of this drawing would suggest that it may have been a preparatory study for a painting intended as part of a ceiling decoration. A similarly shaped drawing, formerly in the Michel Gaud collection5, is a study for a ceiling painting of The Fall of Manna, painted between 1589 and 1590 for the church of the Gesuiti in Venice. Palma Giovane treated the subject of The Fall of the Rebel Angels in at least two paintings, though both are different in composition and format from the present sheet. A canvas in the Galleria Borghese in Rome6 is horizontal in format, while another painting of The Fall of the Rebel Angels in a private collection in Bergamo7, though also dissimilar in composition, is closer in shape to the present sheet. Among other drawings of the subject is one in the British Museum, datable to the early 1580’s8. A similar subject also occurs in a painting of the exterminating angels of the Apocalypse, part of a group of canvases making up an Apocalypse cycle painted by Palma for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice in 15819.
9 AVANZINO NUCCI Gualdo Tadino 1551-1629 Rome The Marriage of the Virgin Pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, on blue paper. Inscribed (signed?) Avanzino in brown ink at the lower centre and, in a different hand, Pomerancio in brown ink at the lower right. 248 x 170 mm. (9 3/4 x 6 5/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot [Piasa], 20 November 2000, lot 14 (as Attributed to Niccolo Circignano, called il Pomerancio); P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 2001; Private collection. LITERATURE: Marguerite Guillaume, Catalogue des dessins italiens: Collections du musée des BeauxArts de Dijon, Dijon, 2004, p.146, under no.255. Among the less well-known exponents of the late Mannerist fresco tradition in Rome, Avanzino Nucci was a student of Niccolò Circignani, called Il Pomarancio. He is thought to have come from the small town of Gualdo Tadino, not far from Città di Castello, since a drawing by him in the Uffizi is signed ‘Avanzino Nucci da Gualdo’. Between 1595 and 1599 Nucci worked in Naples, where in 1596 he painted a fresco cycle depicting the history of the Carthusian order for the monastery of San Martino. He also worked with Belisario Corenzio at the church of the Annunziata in 1598. Upon his return to Rome, Nucci continued to receive commissions for altarpieces and frescoes, although very little of this work survives today. A Baptism of Constantine is in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale, and old guidebooks mention paintings by Nucci in several other Roman churches, including Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Sant’Agostino, San Giuseppe dei Falegnami and San Marcello al Corso. A Virgin and Child with Saints, signed and dated 1620, is in Serrasanquirico, near Ancona. Avanzino Nucci’s distinctive draughtsmanship, with a preference for pen and ink with white heightening on blue or grey-green paper, led the scholar Philip Pouncey to assemble a group of some fifty drawings by the artist under the provisional name of the ‘pseudo-Bernardo Castello’, reflecting their superficial similarities with the drawings of that Genoese painter. In 1967, however, he was able to identify the artist on the basis of a preparatory study in Berlin for a figure in the San Silvestro altarpiece of The Baptism of Constantine. Pouncey’s attribution of this group of drawings to the gifted but little-known Nucci was typical of his pioneering approach towards the study of 16th century Italian draughtsmanship. Although he had planned to publish an article on Nucci’s drawings, it was never completed. A draft of the text survives, which begins: ‘The reconstruction of a minor figure in the field of Roman Mannerism may seem hardly worth the effort even to those who do not take the view that this is a chapter in the history of art that may be safely skipped. Judged by his artistic value, Avanzino Nucci (1551-1629) perhaps hardly deserves the shortest of short notices. But in art history, as in life, nuisance value is a factor to be reckoned with and it must be admitted that an artist like Avanzino who is not only prolific but is found competing or collaborating with more important painters is liable to prove a stumbling block to those who are not aware of his existence. It seems, in short, desirable that enough of his work should be published to enable the student of the period to isolate him from his Mannerist colleagues.’1 A typical and attractive example of Avanzino Nucci’s manner of drawing, the present sheet remains unrelated to any known painting or fresco; this is not unusual, however, given the paucity of surviving works by the artist. The sculptural drapery of the figures is typical of Nucci’s drawn oeuvre, and among stylistically comparable drawings is a Virgin and Child with Saints Charles Borromeo and Marta in the Louvre2.
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10 ROMAN SCHOOL Circa 1600 The Miracle of the Santa Casa of Loreto Pen, brush and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, with framing lines in brown ink. Squared for transfer in black chalk. 252 x 179 mm. (9 7/ 8 x 7 in.) PROVENANCE: Cesare Frigerio, Milan (Lugt 4363)1, his collector’s mark at the lower left centre. This splendid drawing, which has this far escaped a firm attribution, depicts the Miracle of the Santa Casa of Loreto. The Santa Casa (or Holy House) of Loreto was the house in Nazareth where the Virgin Mary lived, and where she received the Angel of the Annunciation. The little house was a place of pilgrimage from the earliest days of Christianity. According to legend, when Nazareth was threatened by Saracen armies in 1291, the entire house was miraculously raised from its foundations and transported by angels from Nazareth to the town of Tersatto in Dalmatia, in modern-day Croatia. In 1294, with Tersatto under threat from the Moorish advances into Albania, the house was again carried by angels across the Adriatic Sea, and eventually was deposited in the town of Loreto. In the late 15th and early 16th century a large basilica was built over the house by the architects Giuliano da Maiano, Giuliano da Sangallo and Bramante, with the façade completed in the late 16th century under the patronage of Pope Sixtus V. The elaborate decoration of the interior of the basilica is the work of several generations of painters, sculptors and craftsmen. The Santa Casa at Loreto remains an important place of pilgrimage for Catholics today.
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11 BERNARDO CASTELLO Genoa 1557-1627 Genoa Perseus and Andromeda Pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, on blue-green paper. Squared in black chalk for transfer, and with framing lines in brown ink. 202 x 258 mm. (8 x 10 1/ 8 in.) [sheet] PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 20 January 1982, lot 56 (as Giovanni Battista Castello); Mia Weiner, New York, in 1984; Stuart Denenberg, San Francisco, in 1989. LITERATURE: William M. Griswold and Linda Wolk-Simon, Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1994, p.49, no.44; Eric Pagliano, de Venise à Palerme: Dessins italiens du musée des beaux-arts d’Orléans XVe-XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 2003, p.264, under no.157. EXHIBITED: New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections, 1994, no.44. A pupil of Andrea Semino, Bernardo Castello was also influenced by the work of Luca Cambiaso, as is evident in such early works as a Nativity in the Genoese church of San Gerolamo di Quarto. His earliest dated work is an altarpiece for a church outside Genoa, completed in 1580, and he continued to produce paintings for local churches. Among the most important of these are a Saint Ursula of 1590 in Santa Maria della Vigne and a Martyrdom of Saint Peter of 1597 for Santa Maria di Castello. Among Castello’s important decorative projects were frescoes in the Villa Spinola and the Villa Centurione in Sampierdarena, and the Palazzo de Franchi e Castello in Genoa. In 1586, he designed a frontispiece and twenty illustrations for an edition of Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata, published in Genoa in 1590. The illustrations established Castello’s reputation, and pleased Tasso so much that he wrote a sonnet in honour of the artist. Three further editions of the poem, again accompanied by Castello’s illustrations, were published in 1604, 1615 and 1617, and the artist also frescoed scenes from the Gerusalemme Liberata in several Genoese palaces. Castello made a number of trips to Rome, beginning in 1604, when he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece of The Calling of Saint Peter for St. Peter’s. He also painted an altarpiece in Santa Maria sopra Minerva for Cardinal Giustiniani, the success of which led in 1605 to a commission to decorate part of the Palazzo Giustiniani at Bassani di Sutri, outside Rome. In 1616, during a later trip to Rome, Castello painted frescoes for the Palazzo Rospigliosi Pallavicino and the Palazzo del Quirinale. Most of Bernardo Castello’s drawings are executed in pen and brown ink, often on blue paper, and the present sheet is a fine example of his spirited draughtsmanship. Drawings such as these seem to have been popular with collectors and friends of the artist. In September 1591, for example, the poet Gabriele Chiabrera wrote to Castello requesting a selection of his drawings: ‘I would like those works in pen on blue paper and with as much of that effortlessness of hand and that genius of yours as is possible.’1 Although squared for transfer, the present sheet, which has been dated by Mary Newcome to the 1590’s, is unrelated to any surviving painting or fresco by Castello. The theme of Perseus and Andromeda is rare in Genoese art of the late 16th century, and Castello may have been inspired by his teacher Andrea Semino’s fresco of the subject, painted in the mid-1560’s for the Palazzo Doria in Genoa2, which is, however, different in composition. Also unlike in composition is a fresco of Perseus and Andromeda, by Castello or a member of his studio, which is part of the decoration of the Villa (later Palazzo) Centurione in Sampierdarena3. Among stylistically comparable drawings by Castello is The Abduction of Oreithyia by Boreas, drawn on blue paper and also squared for transfer, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans4.
12 LUDOVICO CARRACCI Bologna 1555-1619 Bologna The Head of a Sleeping Boy Red chalk. A study of a neck and chin (a fragment of a larger drawing) in red chalk on the verso. 111 x 121 mm. (4 3/ 8 x 4 3/4 in.) PROVENANCE: François Desmarais, Nantes, part of an album assembled before 17291; The album broken up and sold at auction (‘Collection de dessins anciens des ecoles françaises et etrangeres des XVIe. XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles’), Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 2 March 1984, the present sheet as lot 99 (as School of Veronese, 16th Century), with the sale stamp D (Lugt 3358); Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 12 January 1990, lot 12 (as School of the Carracci). The oldest member of the Carracci dynasty, Ludovico Carracci trained in the studio of Prospero Fontana in Bologna. Throughout the 1580’s he worked closely with his cousins Annibale and Agostino Carracci, with whom he shared a workshop. All three artists collaborated on the series of frescoes illustrating the Story of Jason in the Palazzo Fava in Bologna, executed between 1583 and 1584. The three Carracci also established a private academy, whose teachings were to become a dominant influence on Bolognese painters of the succeeding generation. Among Ludovico’s early independent works are the large altarpiece known as the Madonna dei Bargellini of 1588, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, and the Cento altarpiece of The Holy Family with Saint Francis of 1591. The three Carracci continued to work together on the further decoration of the Palazzo Fava in the late 1580’s and at the Palazzo Magnani, completed in 1592. Following Annibale’s departure for Rome in 1595, closely followed by Agostino, Ludovico took over the Carracci academy and workshop. He worked on numerous decorative projects in and around Bologna, culminating in the frescoes at San Michele in Bosco of 16051606. Apart from a brief trip to Rome in 1602 and a stay in Piacenza between 1605 and 1609, Ludovico remained in Bologna throughout his career, and he continued to oversee the Carracci academy, known as the Accademia degli Incamminati, until his death. A basic tenet of the Carracci academy was the importance of life drawing, and Ludovico Carracci, like his cousins, produced a number of such studies in red chalk. This was especially true of the years before 1600, a period which accounts for the majority of his drawings in the medium. A recent reassessment of Ludovico’s draughtsmanship has led to a clearer understanding of the artist’s use of chalk in the last two decades of the 16th century, especially in comparison to Annibale Carracci’s better-known chalk studies of the same period. As Babette Bohn has written, ‘During the 1580s and 1590s, Ludovico’s style was quite naturalistic, because he was much more active as a draftsman in chalk and much more involved in the careful preparation of his pictures in preliminary drawings than had previously been supposed. Ludovico emerged as an artist who was quite committed to the use of chalk figure studies in preparation for his paintings and prints before 1600, although the drawings were sometimes used for different purposes than Annibale’s chalk figure drawings.’2 On the basis of a close inspection of the drawing, Babette Bohn has attributed the present sheet to Ludovico Carracci. She points out that stylistic comparisons may be made with a handful of chalk drawings of the late 1580’s by the artist, including a study in red chalk of a nude boy asleep in the British Museum3, a sheet of studies of heads in black chalk in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles4, and a red chalk study of the head of a sleeping boy in a private collection5. Each of these drawings has, like the present sheet, previously borne an attribution to Annibale, which serves to underline the difficulty of separating the early chalk drawings of the two cousins.
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13 JAN VAN DER STRAET, called STRADANUS Bruges 1523-1605 Florence A Prophet or Apostle Black and red chalk, pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with touches of white. Oval. Traces of a framing line in brown ink. Signed, dated and inscribed ioannus stradanus Achademico / di fiorenza 159[0?] in brown ink at the bottom. 180 x 128 mm. (7 1/ 8 x 5 in.) PROVENANCE: Possibly A. Mos, Arnhem, or Dr. J. Nieuwenhuizen Kruseman, Haarlem; Possibly their sale, Amsterdam, R. W. P. de Vries, 7-8 November 19281; Iohan Quirijn van Regteren Altena, Amsterdam (his posthumous sale stamp [Lugt 4617] on the verso)2; Thence by descent. LITERATURE: Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Foreign Catalogue, 1977, Vol.I, p.277, note 7, under no.6312; Karel G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1992, Vol.I, p.356, under no.201, note 24; Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, Jan Van Der Straet detto Giovanni Stradano: flandrus pictor et inventor, Milan, 1997, p.331, under no.656; Joaneath Spicer, Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa and elsewhere, 2004, p.42, under no.11, p.167, under no.11, note 2. A pupil of Peter Aertsen in Antwerp, Jan van der Straet became an independent master there in the early 1540’s. Soon afterwards he travelled to Italy, and by 1545 had settled in Florence, where he worked for the remainder of his career. He joined the group of artists working on the extensive decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio under the supervision of Giorgio Vasari, whose principal assistant and collaborator he became; indeed, more than perhaps any other artist apart from Vasari, Stradanus’s work came to dominate the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio. He also painted several altarpieces for Florentine churches remodelled by Vasari, notably at Santa Maria Novella, Santo Spirito and Santa Croce, and created over 130 cartoons for the Arazzeria Medicea, the tapestry factory founded by Duke Cosimo de’ Medici in 1557. Stradanus also produced a large number of drawings destined to be translated into prints, and many of his designs were sent to Antwerp to be engraved, notably by the Galle family of printmakers and publishers. As one scholar has noted of the artist, ‘It is as print designer and draftsman that he excelled...Hundreds of his designs – all engraved, published, and distributed throughout Europe by printmakers in Antwerp - attest to Stradanus’s particular strength: his inventiveness in subject, composition, and disposition, all particularly well suited for the scale and scope of works on paper.’3 The present sheet is closely related to a series of around thirty drawings of prophets and other Biblical figures by Stradanus, all of similar dimensions and technique, some of which were engraved by Cornelis Galle. The prints after these drawings appeared in two different printed publications. In 1613, several years after the death of Stradanus, nineteen of the drawings, as well as a title page, were published as Icones Prophetarum Veteris Testamenti by Theodoor Galle in Antwerp. A further seven prints were added to the series when it was republished, sometime after 1636, by Theodoor’s son Johannes Galle4. Like a handful of examples from this group of drawings, however, the present sheet does not seem to have been engraved for the Icones Prophetarum Veteris Testamenti, and may have been intended for another series of prints of saints or figures from the New Testament that was never published. Other drawings by Stradanus from this group are today in the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Courtauld Institute Gallery in London, the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, the Fondation Custodia in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC., as well as several private collections5. A handful of these drawings, including the present sheet, bears dates in the 1590’s, and the group as a whole may be dated to the last ten or fifteen years of the artist’s life.
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14 LODOVICO CARDI, called IL CIGOLI Castello di Cigoli 1559-1613 Rome Recto: Study of a Male Nude, Seen from Behind Verso: Study of a Draped Figure, Striding to the Left Red chalk. Traces of a framing line in brown ink at the left edge. Inscribed Cigoli in brown ink at the lower right and numbered 2 in a box in brown ink at the upper left. Inscribed Cig- in brown ink at the lower right and Di Gio Navez in brown ink at the lower left on the verso. Numbered 30 in brown ink at the upper right on the verso, 248 in black chalk on the recto and 249 in black chalk on the verso. 413 x 282 mm. (16 1/4 x 11 1/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Cavaliere Giovanni Navarette, Pisa (his inscription ‘Di Gio Navez’ on the verso)1; Comte Eugène d’Oultremont, Château de Presles, Aiseau-Presle, Belgium2, and thence by descent until c.1985; Private collection, Brussels. LITERATURE: Ixelles, Musée Communal, De Giorgione à Tiepolo: Dessins italiens du 15e au 18e siècle dans les collections privées et publiques de Belgique, exhibition catalogue, 1993, pp.120-121, no.50 (entry by Miles Chappell); Miles Chappell, ‘On the Artist and Collector Giovanni Navarrette’, Commentari d’Arte, Vol.XIV, No.41, 2008, pp.68-70, figs.2, 4 and 5. EXHIBITED: Ixelles, Musée Communal, De Giorgione à Tiepolo: Dessins italiens du 15e au 18e siècle dans les collections privées et publiques de Belgique, 1993, no.50. The leading painter in Florence at the end of the 16th century, Lodovico Cardi, known as Cigoli from the village of his birth, occupies a significant role in the transition from Late Mannerism to the Baroque in Tuscany. Among his first significant commissions was an altarpiece of The Resurrection for a small chapel in the Palazzo Pitti, painted around 1590, which was strongly influenced by his master Santi di Tito’s version of the subject in the church of Santa Croce, completed some fifteen years earlier. A number of important altarpieces for Florentine churches executed throughout the late 1580’s and 1590’s culminated in a large Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, painted in 1597. The first years of the 17th century found Cigoli decorating the vaults of rooms in the Palazzo Pitti, assisted by his pupil Cristofano Allori. In 1604 he moved to Rome, where he was awarded some of the most prestigious artistic commissions of the day, including altarpieces for St. Peter’s and San Paolo fuori le Mura, and the frescoed cupola of the Cappella Paolina of Santa Maria Maggiore. Cigoli continued to divide his time between Rome and Florence until his death in 1613. Cigoli’s drawings have long been admired by collectors and connoisseurs. He drew in a variety of media and with a fluency of technique in chalk, pen and brush, leading one recent scholar to note that Cigoli was ‘an artist who delighted in drawing as an end in itself.’3 The Florentine historian and biographer Filippo Baldinucci, an avid collector of the artist’s drawings, wrote of Cigoli that ‘he drew constantly, and his drawings, done in a style that is his own, display...[a] spontaneity and appealing delicacy of touch, the perfection of the whole and knowledge of anatomy, a certain immediacy and spirit, never known to me except in those of the great Michelangelo...the spirit of one and the other, particularly in the sketches, is such that at first glance 1.
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one finds an immediacy deriving not from the parts but from the whole; an immediacy that inspires awe in the beholder’4. Baldinucci also credits Cigoli with reestablishing the principles of life drawing among the painters of Florence, and he produced numerous studies from life, invariably in red chalk. A considerable number of drawings by the artist, numbering well over a thousand sheets, survive today, with by far the greatest number in the Uffizi in Florence. Neither of the figure studies on both sides of this drawing can be definitively related to a painting by Cigoli. Miles Chappell has, however, tentatively suggested that the male nude may be a first idea for the pose of the angel in the early altarpiece of The Resurrection (fig.1), painted in c.1590 for the Palazzo Pitti5. Long thought to be lost and only recently rediscovered, the painting was one of Cigoli’s first Medici commissions, and marked the beginning of his successful career. The figure of an angel for which Chappell posits this drawing may be a study is in the middle ground of the composition, partially obscured by a soldier. The male nude in this drawing appears to be lifting or holding a rectangular object, only faintly drawn in red chalk, which may perhaps be identified as the tomb slab that the angel lifts in the painting. Chappell has further suggested that the draped figure on the verso of the present sheet may be related to one of the figures in the background of the same painting, an area that is no longer legible due to the poor condition of this part of the canvas. The male nude may also be a first idea for a figure in another painting by Cigoli of the early 1590’s; the Siege of Jerusalem (fig.2) in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin6, in which a group of soldiers raising a ladder is prominent at the right edge of the composition. In this context, it is also interesting to note the very similar pose of a soldier in a monochrome painting of the same subject of The Siege of Jerusalem by Cigoli’s teacher, Santi di Tito. Painted in 1589 as part of the temporary decorations for the marriage of Ferdinando de’Medici and Christina of Lorraine, Santi di Tito’s painting is known only through an engraving of it (fig.3) used to illustrate an account of the wedding festivities, published in 15897. Among comparable red chalk studies of male nudes by Cigoli are several drawings in the Uffizi8 and the Louvre9. The study of a striding draped figure on the verso of this sheet may also be likened, in stylistic terms, to drawings in the Uffizi10. The juxtaposition of nude or semi-nude and draped figure studies on both sides of a sheet occurs in several drawings by Cigoli, including a sheet in the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame11 and a drawing recently on the art market that Chappell has also related to the c.1590 Resurrection for the Palazzo Pitti12. The pen inscription ‘Cigoli’ at the lower right of the recto of the present sheet is identical to that found in drawings by the artist in the Uffizi13 and elsewhere, as well as in a group of chalk drawings by Cigoli, from an 18th century Florentine collection, which appeared at auction in London in 198514. Miles Chappell has suggested that this inscription – certainly by someone close to the artist – may be in the hand of Cigoli’s nephew and biographer, Giovanni Battista Cardi. Another of the drawings with this ‘Cigoli’ inscription, now in the British Museum15, also bears the same inscription ‘Di Gio Navez(?)’ found on the verso of the present sheet. This has been recently identified by Chappell as referring to the 17th century Pisan artist and collector Giovanni Navarrette (died c.1652), of whom little is known today, but who seems to have owned a number of drawings by Cigoli.
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15 ANDREA BOSCOLI Florence c.1560-1608 Florence A Flayed Male Nude, seen from Behind, after Pietro Francavilla Pen and brown ink and brown wash, extensively heightened with white, over an underdrawing in black and red chalk, on pale blue paper. Laid down. 376 x 214 mm. (14 3/4 x 8 3/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 9 July 2003, lot 18; Hill-Stone Inc., New York, in 2004; Private collection. LITERATURE: Apollo, October 2004, p.15 [advertisement]; Clifford S. Ackley, ‘The Intuitive Eye: Drawings and Paintings from the Collection of Horace Wood Brock’, in Horace Wood Brock, Martin P. Levy and Clifford S. Ackley, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2009, p.90 and p.155, no.87, illustrated p.92. EXHIBITED: Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.87. Andrea Boscoli trained in the Florentine studio of Santi di Tito and was admitted into the Accademia del Disegno in 1584. As a young man in the early 1580’s he visited Rome, where he avidly copied the frescoes of Polidoro da Caravaggio that decorated the facades of several palaces. Between 1582 and 1600 Boscoli worked mainly in Florence, with brief stays in Siena and Pisa. His earliest known painting is the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, painted in 1587 for the cloister of the Florentine church of San Pier Maggiore. He was also much involved in the decorations for the apparati celebrating the marriage of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici to Christina of Lorraine in 1589. In 1592 he completed a fresco cycle for the Villa di Corliano at San Giuliano Terme, near Pisa. In the later 1590’s he painted altarpieces for churches in Florence, Pisa and Rimini. Between 1600 and 1605 Boscoli worked mainly in the Marches, painting frescoes and altarpieces in Fano, Fabriano, Macerata, Fermo and elsewhere, while the last years of his career were spent between Florence and Rome. Relatively few paintings by Boscoli survive today, and it is as a draughtsman that he is best known. His drawings were highly praised by his biographer Filippo Baldinucci (who noted that ‘he drew so well...without lacking a boldness and an extraordinarily skillful touch’1) and were avidly collected. Some six hundred drawings by Boscoli are known, with significant groups of drawings in the Uffizi in Florence (many of which were once part of the collection formed by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici), the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome and the Louvre. A large number of Boscoli’s surviving drawings, amounting to almost a third of the total, are copies after the work of other artists; indeed, more drawings of this type by him survive than by any other draughtsman of the period. Like his older contemporary Federico Zuccaro, Boscoli made numerous drawn copies after paintings and frescoes by earlier artists – including Filippino Lippi, Masaccio, Benozzo Gozzoli, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Polidoro, Titian, Correggio, Andrea del Sarto and Baccio Bandinelli – as well as after antique sculpture. He also copied the work of contemporary Florentine painters, including his teacher Santi di Tito, as well as Jacopo da Pontormo, Ludovico Cigoli, Domenico Passignano and Bernardino Poccetti. Always drawn in his own distinctive style, Boscoli’s copies are often quite free in their interpretation of the original figure or composition.
The present sheet is one of four large drawings of the same flayed male figure by Andrea Boscoli. Two studies in the Uffizi, both drawn on blue paper, show the same figure from the front (fig.1) and from the right side2, and strongly lit from the left. Monique Kornell has noted of the Uffizi drawings that ‘the evocative use of lighting, characteristic of the style of the Florentine draughtsman, matches the dramatic nature of the pose...The figure arches its back with its right arm flung across its body.’3 Similarly, Julian Brooks has commented on ‘Boscoli’s characteristically strong chiaroscuro’ in these drawings, and adds that they ‘seem more concerned with the general effect created by the dramatic pose and taut musculature than the intricate detail per se.’4 Another drawing by Boscoli, combining two separate studies of the same flayed figure on one sheet, was sold at auction in New York in 20025. For each of these drawings, Boscoli copied, from several different angles, a bronze statuette of a flayed man by the Franco-Flemish sculptor Pietro Francavilla (1548-1615), a pupil and assistant of Giambologna in Florence. The only extant cast of this écorché sculpture (figs.2-3) is today in the Jagiellonian University Museum in Cracow in Poland, where it has been recorded since the late 18th century6. Francavilla was known to have a particular interest in anatomy, and published a treatise on the subject. As Anthea Brook has noted of Francavilla’s bronze in Cracow, ‘in this statuette the mannerist delight in the intricacies of contrapposto is taken to unusual lengths. The static poses of earlier anatomical illustrations of the 15th and 16th centuries were developed by the time of Vesalius’s Treatise (1543) into a more mannerist style, in which the bend of the heads and the gestures of the hands are expressive and pathetic. It would indeed be difficult to find a more instructive example of mannerist sculpture than the present statuette.’7 The Florentine biographer Filippo Baldinucci wrote of Francavilla that he produced a number of écorché statuettes in terracotta that were cast several times and were avidly studied by artists. Boscoli’s own interest in anatomical drawings of this type finds close parallels in the similar studies of his contemporary in Florence, Ludovico Cardi, known as Cigoli (1559-1613). Indeed, around 1600 Cigoli produced a well-known wax model of a male écorché figure, known as Lo Scorticato and today in the Museo Bargello in Florence8. Cigoli’s only known sculpture, the Scorticato was much celebrated in his lifetime and beyond, and seems also to have been freely copied by Boscoli, in other drawings now in the Uffizi9. Nadia Bastogi has noted ‘the heroic dynamism of these anatomical studies’ by Andrea Boscoli, and has dated these drawings, with their painterly use of white heightening on blue paper, to the final years of the 16th century10.
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16 Attributed to GUGLIELMO CACCIA, called IL MONCALVO Montabone di Acqui 1568-1625 Moncalvo Flying Putti Holding a Veil and a Crown, Another with a Censer Below Black chalk, pen and brown ink, with touches of white heightening, on blue-green paper. 244 x 300 mm. (9 5/ 8 x 11 3/4 in.) Watermark: WV with a clover leaf(?). PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 14 January 1987, lot 48 (as Moncalvo); Dr. E. Kafka, New York. One of the most significant and prolific Piedmontese artists of the first quarter of the 17th century, Gugielmo Caccia was probably trained in Casale Monferrato before moving to Vercelli. There he absorbed the influences of Gaudenzio Ferrari and Bernardino Lanino, as is evident in his decoration of one of the chapels of the Sacro Monte at Crea, completed around 1590. In 1593 he settled in the town of Moncalvo, from which he adopted his name. Between 1605 and 1608 he worked in Turin, collaborating with Federico Zuccaro and several other artists on the decoration of the vault of the Grande Galleria, the very long corridor linking the Palazzo Madama with the new Palazzo Ducale, with a series of forty-eight ‘imagini celesti’. Commissioned by Carlo Emanuele I, Duke of Savoy, the decoration of the gallery, which was destroyed by fire in 1659, was to be the only major secular commission of Moncalvo‘s career. He also worked, on his own, in the Palazzo Madama and the Palazzo del Viccobone, although nothing survives of either project. Soon after his return to Piedmont, Moncalvo reached the height of his activity, painting frescoes and altarpieces for churches throughout Piedmont and Lombardy, notably San Marco in Novara and San Domenico in Chieri. He declined the opportunity to work on the Sacro Monti of Varallo and Orta, choosing instead to complete the decoration of the cupola of the church of San Vittore al Corpo in Milan, where he worked alongside Daniele Crespi. By 1620 he was back in Moncalvo, from where he continued to supply paintings for churches in Turin, Alessandria and elsewhere. He had several pupils, among whom was his daughter Orsola Maddalena, a nun in a local convent, who assisted him on a number of his late paintings. Important groups of drawings by the artist are today in the collections of both the Biblioteca Reale and the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Turin, and the Escola de Belas Artes in Oporto, Portugal. Although similarly playful putti are found throughout the paintings and frescoes of Moncalvo, the draughtsmanship of the present sheet is perhaps more refined and the faces of the putti more individualized than is usual for the artist. Nevertheless, somewhat comparable studies of putti may be found among the drawings by Moncalvo in the Biblioteca Reale in Turin1, as well as in a drawing by the artist of putti with musical instruments on clouds, formerly in the collection of Ian Woodner and sold at auction in 19912. The facial types are also similar to a drawing by Moncalvo that was exhibited at Colnaghi in 1968 and later appeared at auction in London3.
17 PIETRO FACCINI Bologna c.1562-1602 Bologna Study of a Seated Youth, Leaning to the Right Red chalk, with stumping. The upper corners cropped. Inscribed Coreggio in brown ink at the lower left. 237 x 330 mm. (9 3/ 8 x 13 in.), at greatest dimensions. Watermark: A fleur-de-lys in a shield. PROVENANCE: Sir Joshua Reynolds, London (Lugt 2364)1; By descent to his niece, Mary Palmer, later Marchioness of Thomond; The posthumous Reynolds sales, London, A. C. de Poggi, 26 May 1794 onwards or London, H. Philips, 5-26 March 1798; John Bacon Sawrey Morritt, Rokeby Park, nr. Barnard Castle, County Durham2; By descent to Major Henry Edward Morritt, Rokeby Park; Presumably Robin Morritt; Ian Woodner, New York; His posthumous sale, London, Christie’s, 6 July 1991, lot 105; P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1992; James Fairfax, Bowral, N.S.W., Australia. LITERATURE: Catherine Legrand, Le dessin à Bologne 1580-1620: La réforme des trois Carracci, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1994, p.101, under no.66; Jean Goldman, ‘A New Attribution to Pietro Faccini’, Antichità viva, 1996, Nos.2-3, pp.28-29, fig.3; Richard Beresford and Peter Raissis, The James Fairfax Collection of Old Master Paintings, Drawings and Prints, exhibition catalogue, Sydney, 2003, pp.8283, no.21; Plymouth, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius, exhibition catalogue, 2009-2010, p.129, under no.55 (entry by Donato Esposito). EXHIBITED: Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, The James Fairfax Collection of Old Master Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 2003, no.21. Pietro Faccini’s brief career of some twelve years seems to have begun at a relatively late age, when around 1583 he entered the Carracci academy in Bologna. His precocious talent is said to have aroused the jealousy of Annibale Carracci, however, and in the 1590’s Faccini left the Carracci academy. He later established his own school – in direct competition with the Carracci academy – in which the importance of life drawing was particularly stressed. By this time he was already receiving independent commissions for altarpieces, and indeed the one known dated work by him, an early Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence for the Bolognese church of San Giovanni in Monte, was painted in 1590. He may have traveled to Venice, and the influence of Tintoretto noted by his biographer Cesare Malvasia is evident in some of his later works. As Donald Posner has noted, ‘Faccini’s style [was] founded on the Carracci and re-worked in accordance with a personal, and perhaps exorbitant, interpretation of Correggio and Barocci, and Tintoretto and Bassano.’3 According to Malvasia, Faccini was a productive painter known for his small-scale decorative pictures, although only a handful of paintings by him survive today. Held in high regard by his contemporaries, he was elected alongside Guido Reni and Francesco Albani as one of the fifteen consiglieri of the Compagnia dei Pittori in Bologna in 1599. One of his last major works was an altarpiece of The Assumption of the Virgin, painted for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna. Although strongly influenced by both Annibale and Ludovico Carracci, Faccini developed a fairly idiosyncratic style, and unlike them had few obvious followers. The attribution of this fine drawing to Pietro Faccini was first proposed by Babette Bohn in 1991, and was subsequently confirmed by the late Mario di Giampaolo. The drawing shows the influence of Annibale Carracci in the use of soft, stumped red chalk, and probably dates to the period of Faccini’s study with Annibale in the late 1580’s, when both artists were inspired by the drawings of Correggio. Malvasia
reserves special praise for Faccini’s drawings of the male nude, which he notes were often confused with those of Annibale: ‘so many drawings from the nude, that one sees an infinity of his models in all the most famous collections...so sensational, so darting, fluttering, and what is more, so easy and frank, that look as if they were by his master [ie. Annibale Carracci], many are sold every day as if the work of his hand.’4 As the Faccini scholar Mario di Giampaolo has noted, the artist’s work often reflects an ‘unconditional homage to Correggio which is particularly apparent in his many red chalk drawings.’5 The Correggesque quality of this drawing is further evidence of its early date, as the influence of Correggio was most apparent in Faccini’s drawings of the 1580’s. Indeed, as evidenced by the inscription at the lower left, the present sheet was long attributed to Correggio himself. The drawing is, in fact, directly inspired by the figure of a seated ephebos (figs.1-2) at the outer edge of Correggio’s fresco of The Assumption of the Virgin on the cupola of the Duomo in Parma, painted in the second half of the 1520’s6. Faccini has chosen to omit the foreshortened, dangling legs of Correggio’s figure, and has given the youth a more lively expression. The soft, sensuous application of stumped red chalk to depict the play of light and shade on the nude form – note, for example, the way in which the artist has depicted the shadow of the youth’s arm as it falls across the side of his chest – is a characteristic feature of Faccini’s draughtsmanship of the 1580’s. A stylistically comparable drawing by Faccini of a Reclining Male Nude is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford7, while a red chalk study of a male nude in the Louvre8 provides a further point of comparison, in both handling and effect, with this drawing. It has recently been suggested that a red chalk study of a youth in the collection of the British Museum, where it is attributed to Annibale Carracci, may depict the same model as that in the present sheet9. An interesting comparison may also be made with a drawing of a male nude by Annibale in the Louvre10, which appears to be a similarly free interpretation of the type of youthful figure frescoed by Correggio on the cupola of the cathedral in Parma.
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18 PIETRO FACCINI Bologna c.1562-1602 Bologna Recto: The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist Verso: Study for a Deposition Pen and brown ink and brown wash. The verso in black chalk. Inscribed di Pietro Faccini Bolognese and faccino in brown ink on the verso. 218 x 203 mm. (8 5/ 8 x 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Private collection, France; Jean-Marie Le Fell, Paris, in 2001. Aptly described as ‘one of the most creative and original draftsmen of the Emilian school’1, Pietro Faccini worked in a variety of techniques, using pen and ink wash, red and black chalk, watercolour and oiled charcoal. He was an accomplished and versatile draughtsman, and his drawings were greatly admired for what Malvasia calls their ‘gran spirito’. They were especially popular with collectors, and Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici is said to have owned over a hundred drawings by the artist. (Guercino also admired Faccini’s drawings, which were a strong influence on his early chalk style, and is known to have possessed a number of ‘nudi d’accademia’ by the artist.) As the late Mario di Giampaolo wrote of the artist, ‘A great draughtsman, Faccini experimented with the most diverse techniques, often eliminating squaring, a sixteenth century tradition, and showing, in his use of white heightening, his knowledge of the work of Tintoretto.’2 Important groups of drawings by Faccini, for the most part as yet unpublished, are in the collections of the Uffizi, the Louvre, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and the Galleria Estense in Modena. Although unrelated to any surviving painting, the present sheet is a splendid example of Pietro Faccini’s confident draughtsmanship. The use of broad areas of fluid washes to create dramatic effects of light in contrast to the expanse of untouched white paper, as well as the relatively insubstantial forms of the figures themselves, is a characteristic feature of Faccini’s pen draughtsmanship of the late 1590’s. (As has been noted of the artist, ‘Faccini, like Guercino, based his whole method of drawing on the emphasis of light and tone over colour.’3) The areas of very fine pen hatching and crosshatching to add depth to the shadows, particularly evident in the drapery of the young Saint John the Baptist, have led to the tentative suggestion that the drawing may have been intended to have been reproduced as a print. Stylistically comparable drawings by Faccini include two studies for his altarpiece of The Assumption of the Virgin in the Bolognese church of Santa Maria dei Servi; one in the Musée Calvet in Avignon4 and the other in the Louvre5. Also comparable in technique and handling are two drawings of The Entombment of Christ and The Holy Family with Saints Francis and Dominic in the British Museum6, as well as a drawing of the Virgin and Child in Frankfurt, formerly given to Bartolomeo Schedoni but attributed to Faccini by Christel Thiem7. A pair of studies of The Holy Family Adored by Saint Francis in the Louvre8 and a drawing of The Holy Family with Saints Catherine of Siena and Dominic, also in the Louvre9, are similarly akin to the present sheet in style. Donald Posner’s comments on the last of these drawings, the The Holy Family with Saints Catherine of Siena and Dominic in the Louvre, may equally be applied to the present sheet. He describes the Louvre drawing as ‘almost brilliant in its control of the decorative and spatial potential of planes of carefully modulated values...Here Faccini is strictly dependent on Ludovico [Carracci]’s drawing style, but he is already beginning to force Ludovico’s manner toward a maximum exploitation of the animating and organizational power of light. Whereas in Ludovico’s drawings light and shade serve primarily to give contrast and strengthen the linear design, in such a drawing as this one by Faccini the light itself becomes the core, the main organizing force of the composition. Faccini uses the pen line not to define the contours of the forms, but as a minimal indication of the limits of the planes of light and shade of which they are composed.’10
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The rapidly drawn study in black chalk on the verso of this sheet may have been intended for a small devotional painting. Indeed, the drawing is close in composition to a late painting on copper by Faccini of Christ Supported by Angels (fig.1), painted around 1600 and now in a private collection11. Only recently rediscovered, this small painting, incoporating angels of a particularly Correggesque nature, is a new addition to the relatively small corpus of devotional pictures by the artist. (Although Malvasia writes that Faccini was highly regarded for his small-scale easel pictures, very few of these works are known today.) Other drawings of a similar subject by Faccini, though different in composition, are in the Albertina in Vienna12 and the British Museum13. Mario di Giampaolo, who confirmed the attribution of this drawing to Faccini, noted that the black chalk study on the verso of the sheet bears similarities with the draughtsmanship of the Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto. Like many of his contemporaries in Bologna, Faccini was influenced by the paintings and drawings of the Venetian masters, and Tintoretto in particular. A similarly free and spirited handling of chalk is found in part of the underdrawing of a study by Faccini of Two Saints with Putti in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford14.
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19 TUSCAN SCHOOL Circa 1600 Saint Francis Standing in Prayer Black and red chalk, with stumping and touches of brown wash. Squared for transfer in red chalk. Portions of the sheet made up at the right and bottom edges. 325 x 231 mm. (12 3/4 x 9 1/ 8 in.) Watermark: A crown (similar to Briquet 4840; Bologna 1535). PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 1 July 1997, lot 29 (as attributed to Francesco Vanni); Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., London; Jacques Hollander, Ohain, Belgium. A firm attribution for this fine drawing has thus far proved difficult to establish, though it seems to be the work of a Sienese or Florentine artist. Marco Ciampolini has suggested that, while elements of the present sheet are reminiscent of the work of the Sienese painters Francesco Vanni (1563-1610) and Ventura Salimbeni (1569-1613), the drawing seems instead to be the work of a draughtsman of the succeeding generation in Siena, contemporary with such artists as Bernardino Capitelli (1590-1640) or Rutilio Manetti (1571-1639), although Sienese drawings of this period remain little studied.
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20 Attributed to CRISTOFANO ALLORI Florence 1577-1621 Florence Landscape with a Grove of Trees, a Town in the Distance Black chalk, with touches of red chalk. Inscribed Titiano in brown ink at the lower left and numbered G.40 in brown ink at the lower right of the mount. Laid down on a 17th century Italian mount. 178 x 189 mm. (7 x 7 3/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, Milan, Finarte, 25 October 1988, lot 192 (as Cristofano Allori). The son and pupil of the painter Alessandro Allori, Cristofano Allori became one of the leading artists of the early Baroque in Florence. His earliest known works are portrait commissions, painted in the 1590’s and indebted to the example of his father and of Bronzino. From 1600 Allori came under the influence of such artists as Ludovico Cigoli and Domenico Passignano, whose work was a rejection of the hard, cold style of Bronzino and the elder Allori, and began moving towards a more naturalistic and less mannered style of painting. Around this time Cristofano left the studio of his father and began working with Gregorio Pagani. He also assisted Cigoli on the decoration of some rooms in the Palazzo Pitti, and it was Cigoli’s influence that was to be particularly pervasive. A painting of 1602 in the Florentine church of Santissima Annunziata is ‘the first major work displaying the descriptive naturalism, rich colours, creamy textures and introspective mood that became characteristic of Cristofano’s style.’1 The early years of the 17th century found the artist also much admired as a portrait painter, his work in this field typified by the Portrait of Bernardo Davanzati of c.1605 in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. From 1605 until his death in 1621, Allori was one of the most successful painters in Florence, counting among his patrons the Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici and other members of the Ducal court. Among the significant works of this period were a ceiling painting of The Embarkation of Marie de’ Medici in the church of the Cavalieri di Stefano in Pisa, completed in 1605, and a massive Resurrection for the cathedral of Pistoia, on which he worked between 1602 and 1610. The last decade of his career saw the artist painting religious easel pictures characterized by an intense emotionalism, graceful movement and superb draughtsmanship, notably the Judith with the Head of Holofernes of c.1615, in which the severed head is a self-portrait. In his seminal account of 17th century Florentine painting, Filippo Baldinucci notes that Cristofano Allori made a number of landscape drawings in the environs of Florence: ‘The idea then came to our painter to learn how to do landscapes well, and to that end, he would often leave the city to depict beautiful views of the countryside from life in red and black chalk. He made many such drawings in a small sketchbook, so pleasingly marked that they seemed coloured, all of which are now in the possession of he who writes these words, and have been assigned to one of his albums containing drawings by the most excellent artists of that time which he has collected.’2 The landscape drawings by Allori which Baldinucci mentions as being in his own collection include a group of fifteen sheets, all apparently from one sketchbook and stylistically compatible with the present sheet, which are now in the Louvre3. The attribution of this drawing to Cristofano Allori was first proposed by Miles Chappell. As Chappell has written, Allori ‘made many drawings of scenes and vignettes of nature...His picturesque views of Tuscan scenes with rustic houses and winding roads framed by twisting trees with sinuous branches and graceful, detailed clusters of leaves are unified by an atmospheric quality deriving from...soft, often blunt chalks.’4 Allori may have used such sketches as studies for the backgrounds of his paintings. Chappell has further noted of the artist’s landscape drawings that ‘[Allori] absorbed the northern landscape style of Paul Bril and...like contemporary landscape artists in Florence such as Remigio Cantagallina and Jacques Callot, he was moving towards a fresher, more natural style.’5 A stylistically comparable landscape sketch, drawn in black and red chalk and also attributed to Allori by Chappell, is in a private collection6.
21 BELISARIO CORENZIO Acaia (Greece) c.1558-c.1646 Naples Three Designs for Pendentives with Allegorical Female Figures Brush and blue wash, with touches of pen and brown ink. Squared for transfer in black chalk. Inscribed Bilisario a Monte Cassino in brown ink at the bottom. Rectangular sections at the central and upper portions of the left and right edges of the sheet cut out, and the whole sheet inlaid onto the mount. 237 x 168 mm. (9 3/ 8 x 6 5/ 8 in.) at greatest dimensions. PROVENANCE: From an album of drawings, mostly by Neapolitan artists, belonging to Don Gaspar Méndez de Haro y Guzman, Marqués del Carpio, Rome and Naples1; The album sold and dispersed at auction (‘The Property of a Gentleman’), London, Christie’s, 20 March 1973, the present sheet as lot 12; Lorna Lowe, London; Purchased from her in November 1973 by Ralph Holland, Newcastle. LITERATURE: Viviana Farina, ‘La collezione del Viceré: il Marchese del Carpio, padre Sebastiano Resta e la prima raccolta ragionata di disegni napoletani’, in Francesco Solinas and Sebastian Schütze, ed., Le Dessin Napolitain: Actes du colloque international, Paris, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 6-8 Mars 2008, Rome, 2010, pp.190-192, fig.8 (as location unknown). EXHIBITED: Newcastle, Hatton Gallery, Italian and Other Drawings 1500-1800, 1974, no.44; London, Courtauld Institute Galleries, Italian and other Drawings 1500-1800, from the Ralph Holland Collection, 1975, no.31; Newcastle, Hatton Gallery, Italian Drawings 1525-1750 from the Collection of Ralph Holland, May-June 1982, no.36. Of Greek origins, Belisario Corenzio is said by his biographer Bernardo de Dominici to have worked in the studio of Jacopo Tintoretto in Venice before settling in Naples, although this is unlikely. He was certainly already living in Naples at a very young age, as in 1574 he is recorded as an apprentice in the workshop of another Greek painter there. Corenzio is documented in Naples between 1590 and the 1640’s, and seems to have worked in the city for his entire career. His earliest known works date from the early 1590’s, and include fresco cycles for the churches of Santa Maria la Nova and Sant’Andrea delle Dame. While working at the Certosa di San Martino in 1592 he came under the influence of the Roman painter Cavaliere d’Arpino, who had worked at the Certosa a few years earlier, and whose influence was to dominate the young artist’s work throughout the next decade. By the turn of the century Corenzio had become the leading painter in Naples, painting altarpieces and fresco cycles for several major churches, as well as the Palazzo Reale and the crypt of the Duomo at Salerno. Although well established as a local artist, Corenzio continued to be open to the work of those Roman painters who were briefly active in Naples, including Caravaggio and Guido Reni. Corenzio was one of the first Neapolitan artists to leave a fairly large corpus of drawings. As a draughtsman, he developed a distinctive style, with fluid washes and a liberal use of white heightening, often working on coloured paper. De Dominici noted that ‘One sees many drawings by Belisario…and truly some of his [drawings] especially of figures, are so good that they could be from the hand of Tintoretto; in imitation of whom he used to draw on tinted paper, heightened with white.’2 The use of blue wash in this drawing is another characteristic of Corenzio’s draughtsmanship. As noted by the old inscription at the bottom of the sheet, this drawing comprises preliminary studies for Corenzio’s frescoes in the dome of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, painted between 1625 and 1629 but destroyed in 1944, during the Second World War. The cupola of the dome was frescoed with a scene of The Glory of Saint Benedict, while the pendentives below were occupied by female representations of the four virtues required for monastic life; Poverty, Chastity, Contemplation and Obedience. The main figure in this drawing would appear to be a study for Contemplation, with an alternative design at the lower right, while at the lower left is a study for a figure of Chastity.
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22 GIACOMO CAVEDONE Sassuolo 1577-c.1660 Bologna The Head of a Bearded Man Charcoal, heightened with white chalk, on paper washed a light brown, backed. Made up at the lower left and right and upper right corners. Numbered 18. in brown ink and inscribed Domenichino / St. Gerolamo in pencil on the reverse of the former mount. Inscribed Original sketch of the Head of St. Gerome for his picture of the / Communion, now at Rome – by Domenichino and numbered 16 in brown ink on the album page on which this drawing was formerly mounted. 271 x 203 mm. (10 5/ 8 x 8 in.) PROVENANCE: From an album of mostly Bolognese drawings, assembled by a certain Mr. Yeates in Italy in 1823 (according to an inscription on the first page of the album); Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s Olympia, 11 December 2002, lot 30; Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., London; Private collection. Giacomo Cavedone entered the Carracci academy in 1591, and eventually rose to become one of Ludovico Carracci’s chief assistants. He worked with Ludovico until the latter’s death in 1619, collaborating on such projects as the extensive decoration of San Michele in Bosco. Cavedone’s first known independent painting is a Saint Stephen in Glory of 1601. In 1609 he travelled to Rome, where he assisted Guido Reni on the decoration of the Cappella Paolina in Monte Cavallo. The influence of this Roman sojourn, and particularly his exposure to the work of Caravaggio, is reflected in such paintings as The Baptism of Christ of c.1611-1612. Cavedone painted several monumental altarpieces for churches in and around Bologna, and the effects of a trip to Venice between 1612 and 1613 can be seen in the painterly richness of such pictures as the large Sant’Alò altarpiece of 1614. Injuries sustained as a result of a fall from scaffolding in 1623 and the loss of his wife and children to the plague of 1630 seems to have ended Cavedone’s career prematurely, and he produced very little work in the remaining thirty years before his death. Cavedone’s drawings display a distinctive combination of Venetian and Bolognese elements, with the particular influence of the draughtsmanship of Titian on the one hand and Ludovico Carracci on the other. His drawings may be divided into three main groups – compositional sketches, figure and drapery studies, and large studies of individual heads – and approximately half of his known drawings may be related to extant paintings. For figure and head studies, he tended to use either a soft black chalk, usually applied on blue paper, or – as in the present sheet – charcoal heightened with white chalk on light brown (sometimes oiled) paper; Cavedone’s drawings of this latter type were to be a strong influence on the draughtsmanship of his younger contemporary, Guercino. The largest and most important group of drawings by the artist, numbering just under seventy sheets, is today in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Previously attributed to Domenichino, the present sheet cannot be related to any surviving work by Giacomo Cavedone, although the facial type and morphology of the model is entirely typical of the artist. A similar drawing of a bearded man, of identical technique, was formerly in the Horvitz collection1; this was a study for the head of Saint Joseph in Cavedone’s altarpiece of The Adoration of the Magi of 1614, in the Bolognese church of San Paolo Maggiore. The present sheet may further be compared with several examples from a group of fifty drawings of male and female heads at Windsor Castle2. The Windsor drawings were assembled in an album, described in a late 18th century inventory of King George III’s collection as ‘Teste di Cavedone. Although slight yet drawn with great fire and spirit, most as large as life.’3 Other drawings by Cavedone of this type are in the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Laura Giles has pointed out that a drawing of the same head in an identical pose, larger than the present sheet and showing more of the neck and head, is at Windsor Castle4.
23 AURELIO LOMI Pisa 1556-1622 Pisa Studies of Youths Pulling on Ropes Black chalk, heightened with touches of white chalk, on blue paper. A faint study of the main figure repeated in black chalk on the verso. Signed(?) lomi in brown ink at the bottom centre. A made up section at the lower left corner. 200 x 301 mm. (7 7/ 8 x 11 7/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: An anonymous 17th or 18th century Florentine collection, possibly that of Giuseppe Santini, Florence1; Possibly Comte Eugène d’Oultremont, Château de Presles, Aiseau-Presle, Belgium, and thence by descent; Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Nobleman’), London, Christie’s, 12 December 1985, lot 190; Kate Ganz, London; Nissman, Abromson & Co., Brookline, MA. LITERATURE: Lawrence Turcic and Mary Newcome, ‘Drawings by Aurelio Lomi’, Paragone, September 1991, p.46, no.29 (not illustrated); Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Dessins de la collection Christian et Isabelle Adrien, exhibition catalogue, 2012, p.49, under no.9, note 7. The half-brother of the painter Orazio Gentileschi, Aurelio Lomi was a pupil of Ludovico Cigoli and Alessandro Allori in Florence and worked mainly in Tuscany and Liguria. Admitted into the Accademia del Disegno in Florence in 1578, he spent the early years of his independent career in Rome, where among his chief works were the vault frescoes of the Assunta chapel of Santa Maria in Vallicella, painted between 1587 and 1588. Lomi spent much of his career in his native Pisa, painting altarpieces for such local churches as San Silvestro, San Martino, Santa Maria del Carmine and San Frediano, as well as several works for the Duomo. He also painted works for Florentine churches, including Santo Spirito, San Lorenzo, Santissima Annunziata and the Chiesa del Carmine, as well as for churches in Bologna, Lucca and Pistoia. Lomi was active in Genoa between 1597 and 1604, and altarpieces by him are today in Santa Maria in Castello, San Siro, Santa Anna, Santa Maria Maddalena and other churches in the city and elsewhere in Liguria. Among the handful of paintings by the artist outside Italy is a Christ Washing the Feet of Saint Peter in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Aurelio Lomi’s drawings take the form of preparatory figure studies for paintings, and many can be connected with extant works, dating from between 1597 and 1619. In general, Lomi’s practice was to draw compositional studies in pen and ink, while using black chalk for studies of individual figures and motifs. While his pen drawings reflect something of the Genoese tradition of draughtsmanship, his chalk studies – often on coloured paper – are closer to the manner of such Florentine artists as Bernardino Poccetti and Agostino Ciampelli. The present sheet is a typical example of the latter, and displays Lomi’s characteristic habit of repeating studies of parts of the figure on the same sheet. While it has not proved possible to relate the two figures in this drawing to any work by the artist, the pose of the right-hand youth is similar to that of a man throwing a stone in Lomi’s painting of The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, today in the Galleria del Palazzo Bianco in Genoa2. Among stylistically comparable drawings by Lomi are a drawing of four studies of a youth in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen3, which is preparatory for an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi of 16001604, and a drawing of a man seen from behind, in a private collection in Paris4, which is a study for a painting of Saint Francis Curing a Blind Man of 1611-1614 in Pisa. Also similar are two double-sided drawings, in the Louvre5 and the British Museum6, which both contain studies for The Feast of Ahasuerus in the Duomo in Pisa, painted between 1610 and 1617. An identical signature or inscription ‘lomi’ occurs on a double-sided chalk drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin7, which contains studies for Lomi’s 1610 altarpiece of Christ Healing the Blind Man, also in the Duomo in Pisa.
24 REMIGIO CANTAGALLINA Borgo San Sepolcro 1582/3-c.1656 Florence A Boat in a Harbour Pen and brown ink and wash, over faint traces of an underdrawing in black chalk. Framing lines in brown ink. Laid down. Inscribed (in a modern hand) Crescenzio Onofrio Romano in pencil on the former backing sheet. 221 x 238 mm. (8 3/4 x 9 3/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Mathias Komor, New York (Lugt 1882a), his mark on the backing sheet; Christian Humann, New York; His sale, New York, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 12 June 1982, lot 22; Mark Fehrs Haukohl, Houston; His (anonymous) sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 26 January 2000, lot 145 (unsold); P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 2001; Private collection. LITERATURE: Esther de Vécsey, ed., Italian Drawings from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries from Houston Collections, exhibition catalogue, Houston, 1985, unnumbered, p.17. EXHIBITED: Houston, University of Houston, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, Italian Drawings from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries from Houston Collections, 1985; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, The Private Eye: Selected Works from Collections of Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts, 1989, no.51. Thought to be a pupil of Giulio Parigi, Remigio Cantagallina produced his earliest known works, a series of landscape etchings, in 1603. Relatively little is known of his life and career, which was spent mostly in Florence, although a trip to Flanders between 1612 and 1613 is documented by a number of drawings in a sketchbook today in the Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Described by Filippo Baldinucci as ‘famous for his landscape drawings in pen’ (‘celebre in disegnar paesi a penna’), Cantagallina was particularly influenced by the work of Northern artists such as Paul Bril. He was, in turn, an important influence on the later generation of landscape draughtsmen working in Florence, including Ercole Bazzicaluva, Baccio del Bianco and Jacques Callot, whom Cantagallina seems to have befriended on his arrival in Florence in the early years of the 17th century, and may have helped to train. Cantagallina’s draughtsmanship was closely related to his work as a printmaker, and he produced over sixty etchings, mostly of pastoral landscapes and festival scenes. Among the few public works commissioned from the artist were the ephemeral decorations to celebrate the wedding in Florence of the Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici to Maria Maddalena of Austria, executed in collaboration with Parigi in 1508. Only one signed painting by Cantagallina is known, however; a very large Last Supper painted with his brother Antonio in 1604 for a monastery in his native town of Sansepolcro and now in the Museo Civico there. A prolific artist, Cantagallina produced a large number of highly finished topographical views of Florence and other sites in Tuscany, drawn with warm brown washes, that are among his finest achievements. Many of these drawings were almost certainly intended as independent works of art. The largest collection of landscape drawings by the artist, numbering more than two hundred sheets, is in the Uffizi in Florence; one of these, a drawing dated 1655, is his last known dated work. The drawings of Cantagallina and his younger contemporary Baccio del Bianco (1604-1657) have often been confused, as both draughtsmen worked in a similar style. A comparable pen landscape of boats in a natural harbour, in the Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence, has, for example, been attributed to Baccio del Bianco1. Similar studies of boats are, however, to be found in the Cantagallina sketchbook in Brussels, drawn during a trip the artist made to the Low Countries between 1612 and 16132. Another, similar drawing of a boat in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes3, attributed there to Baccio del Bianco, may also be by the elder artist. Two further drawings by Cantagallina of coastal landscapes with shipping, more expansive in composition, were like the present sheet also at one time in the collection of Christian Humann4.
25 PIETRO NOVELLI, called IL MONREALESE Monreale 1603-1647 Palermo Saint Francis Appearing to a Pope and King Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over traces of an underdrawing in black chalk. Inscribed fori(?) no. 42- in brown ink on the verso. 316 x 231 mm. (12 1/ 2 x 9 1/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 11 June 1981, lot 108; Dr. G.A. Ricci, Rome; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 18 April 1994, lot 59; P. & D. Colnaghi, London; Private collection. LITERATURE: Palermo, Albergo dei Poveri, Pietro Novelli e il suo ambiente, 1990, p.390, no.III-19, incorrectly illustrated p.391 as no.III-18 (entry by Santina Grasso); Santina Grasso, ‘Aggiunte al catalogo di Pietro Novelli disegnatore’, Storia dell’arte, 1998, p.353. EXHIBITED: Stanford, Stanford University Museum of Art, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century Italian Drawings from a Private Collection, 1988, no.30; Palermo, Albergo dei Poveri, Pietro Novelli e il suo ambiente, 1990, no.III-19. The only significant painter working in Sicily in the early 17th century, Pietro Novelli, known as Monrealese after his birthplace, was established as an independent artist by 1618. The early influence of Anthony Van Dyck, who was in Palermo in 1624, is evident in Monrealese’s fresco of The Coronation of the Virgin, painted in 1630 for the Oratorio del Rosario in Palermo. A trip to mainland Italy between 1631 and 1633 introduced the artist to the naturalism of Neapolitan art, typified by the work of Jusepe de Ribera and Massimo Stanzione. His later paintings display a distinct affinity with the Neapolitan tradition, combined with his earlier exposure to Venetian and Flemish styles. Monrealese’s paintings are today to be found almost exclusively in Sicily, where he also executed fresco cycles such as those in the Palazzo Normanni in Palermo. Drawn in the artist’s distinctive, somewhat calligraphic pen manner, this is a study, with several significant differences, for Monrealese’s painting of Saint Louis of France Receiving the Franciscan Girdle from Saint Francis (fig.1), painted between 1635 and 1637 for the church of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto (better known as the Badia Nuova) in Palermo1. The altarpiece, which has undergone some repainting and has additions on three sides, differs from the drawing in several respects, particularly in the disposition of the figures, and as such the present sheet must represent an early stage in the preparatory process. A variant or copy of this drawing is in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia in Palermo2. Monrealese had painted a fresco of the same subject a few years earlier for San Francesco d’Assisi. Destroyed in the Palermo earthquake of March 1823, the fresco is recorded in an engraving published two years earlier3. Some elements of the present sheet excluded from the Badia Nuova altarpiece, such as the soldier at the right, may be found in the composition of the lost fresco, which was, however, horizontal in format.
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26 STEFANO DELLA BELLA Florence 1610-1664 Florence A Man on a Horse in a Landscape Pen and brown ink. Laid down on a late 18th century or 19th century mount. Numbered 8 in brown ink on the reverse of the mount. 139 x 190 mm. (5 1/ 2 x 7 1/ 2 in.) PROVENANCE: From an album of miscellaneous, mostly Bolognese, drawings assembled by a certain Mr. Yeates in Italy in 1823 (according to an inscription on the first page of the album); Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s Olympia, 11 December 2002, part of lot 22; Private collection, Atlanta. A gifted draughtsman and designer, Stefano della Bella was born into a family of artists. Apprenticed to a goldsmith, he later entered the workshop of the painter Giovanni Battista Vanni, and also received training in etching from Remigio Cantagallina. He came to be particularly influenced by the work of Jacques Callot, although it is unlikely that the two artists ever actually met. Della Bella’s first prints date to around 1627, and he eventually succeeded Callot as Medici court designer and printmaker, his commissions including etchings of public festivals, tournaments and banquets hosted by the Medici in Florence. Under the patronage of the Medici, Della Bella was sent in 1633 to Rome, where he made drawings after antique and Renaissance masters, landscapes and scenes of everyday life. In 1639 he accompanied the Medici ambassador to the Parisian court of Louis XIII, and remained in France for ten years. Della Bella established a flourishing career in Paris, publishing numerous prints and obtaining significant commissions from Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, as well as other members of the court and the aristocracy. Indeed, the majority of his prints date from this fertile Parisian period, and include scenes of life at the French court. Also among his projects was the design of a set of playing cards in 1644 for the young Dauphin, the future Louis XIV. After his return to Florence in 1650, Della Bella continued to enjoy Medici patronage. Over the next few years he produced drawings of the gardens of the Medici villa at Pratolino, the port of Livorno and the Villa Medici in Rome, and also became the drawing master to the future Duke, Cosimo III. He was also active as a designer of costumes for the various pageants, masquerades and ballets of the Medici court, as well as for the performances of the Accademia degli Immobili, a group of prominent Florentine citizens and noblemen who staged musical plays each year. After suffering a stroke in 1661, Della Bella appears to have worked very little before his death three years later. This lively pen sketch is typical of Stefano della Bella’s interest in everyday rural life, and his keen observation of the world around him. The drawing is likely to date from the first half of the artist’s career, when he was working in Florence and Rome, before his move to Paris in 1639. At this time he seems to have often worked outdoors, filling several sketchbooks with lively scenes of people, buildings and festivities, all drawn on the spot and used as a stock of images and motifs for his etchings and more finished drawings. A closely comparable pen and ink drawing of a horseman at a fountain, probably drawn in Rome, is in the Louvre1, and was later used for an etching from the series Diverses figures et griffonnemens of c.16462. Among other drawings of similar subjects is a sheet in the Czartorsyki collection at the National Museum in Cracow3, which is in turn related to one of a series of etchings of peasant subjects first published around 1641, and a drawing of a peasant seated on a mule in the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome4. Two related subjects can also be found among Della Bella’s etchings in the series of Diversi capricci of c.16475.
27 STEFANO DELLA BELLA Florence 1610-1664 Florence An Elaborate Vase Decorated with Nymphs, Snakes, a Swan and a Musical Score Pen and brown ink and brown wash. Extensively inscribed in brown ink on the musical scores at the centre and at the lower left. 195 x 130 mm. (7 5/ 8 x 5 1/ 8 in.) Watermark: Paschal lamb in a double circle [partial] (similar to Briquet 58-61; Rome 1531-1535, Naples 1548, 1570 and 1584). PROVENANCE: Hill-Stone Inc., New York; Galerie Paul Prouté, Paris, in 2004; Monica Streiff, Switzerland. Only a very few paintings by Stefano della Bella (several of which are painted on coloured stone, or pietra paesina) survive to this day, and it is as a graphic artist that he is best known. A hugely talented and prolific printmaker and draughtsman, he produced works of considerable energy and inventiveness, with an oeuvre numbering over a thousand etchings, and many times more drawings and studies. Significant groups of drawings by the artist are today in the Uffizi, the Louvre, the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome and the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. This remarkable drawing is an unusual addition to the corpus of drawings by Stefano della Bella. It does not relate to any known print by the artist, and may have been intended as a design for the frontispiece of a book or musical manuscript, or perhaps as an autonomous work in its own right. The drawing may nevertheless be associated with a number of the ornament prints that were commissioned from the artist by Parisian publishers. The motif of the seated nymphs and the form of the vase itself are akin to those found in a suite of six etchings of several different designs for vases, published as Raccolta di vasi diversi in c.16461. The nymphs in the present sheet are particularly close to those flanking one of the vases (fig.1) in one of the Raccolta di vasi diversi etchings2, as well as in a preparatory drawing for the print in the Louvre3. As Phyllis Dearborn Massar has noted of the Raccolta di vasi diversi etchings, ‘Fantastic vases, often based on antique bronzes, were perenially favorite subjects with printmakers. Stefano outfantasied all of them, both in the vases themselves and their exuberant contents.’4 The words of the sheet music which forms the central motif of this drawing seems to be a sonnet of sorts. Although the text is fragmentary, it can be read as ‘in mi fortuna / parlami al Core piaga d’Amore li ridarò / cieca importuna tu dici nò nò cieca impor- / tuna tu dici cosi(?) nò nò’, while the text continues at the bottom of the sheet with the words ‘si pur felice’5.
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28 FRANCESCO MONTELATICI, called CECCO BRAVO Florence c.1601-1661 Innsbruck Saint Agatha Red and black chalk. Inscribed Montelatici Francesco, detto Cecco Bravo - / fiorentino - m 1661 / ved: Orlandi. 1.195. in brown ink on the backing sheet. 249 x 193 mm. (9 3/4 x 7 5/ 8 in.) Little is known of the artistic education of Francesco Montelatici, known as Cecco Bravo apparently on account of his violent temperament. He receives only a passing mention, as a student of Giovanni Bilivert, in Filippo Baldinucci’s account of 17th century Florentine painting. He is also thought to have been a pupil of Domenico Passignano and Matteo Rosselli, under whose supervision he worked on several fresco cycles in Florence in the 1620’s. By 1629 he had established his own studio in Florence and was admitted into the Accademia del Disegno. Apart from a few months in Emilia Romagna and Venice between 1630 and 1631, Cecco Bravo worked in Florence and Tuscany for most of his career. Among his most significant works in Florence were mural frescoes for the Sala degli Argenti in the Palazzo Pitti, painted in the late 1630’s, while he also contributed to the decoration of the Casa Buonarroti on the Via Ghibellina. In 1656 Cecco Bravo was appointed master of the life drawing classes at the Accademia di San Luca in Florence. The later years of his career were largely spent painting easel pictures, many of which are recorded in a 1660 inventory of his studio but are now lost. In 1660 he was summoned to work at the court of the Archduke Ferdinand Karl of Austria at Innsbruck, where he died the following year. Cecco Bravo has been recognized as one of the most original and distinctive artists of the Florentine Seicento. As Miles Chappell has noted, ‘his paintings, with their deep, at times passionate expression, forceful figures and impetuous definition with a loaded brush, represent almost a painterly inversion of the Florentine tradition of rigorous disegno…a stylistic identity that is at once spirited, elegant and unique in its pictorial dissolution of form.’1 He was also a gifted draughtsman, and the 18th century Florentine collector and art historian Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri wrote of his drawings that they ‘are sought and treasured by connoisseurs because they truly possess a spirit and wonderful expression beyond all human understanding.’2 Although a fairly large number of drawings by Cecco Bravo survive, only a handful of these may be related to surviving paintings. Among the artist’s drawings are numerous studies of male nudes, saints and religious subjects, as well as a series of mysterious allegorical drawings known as the ‘sogni’, or ‘dreams’. Significant groups of drawings by Cecco Bravo are today in the collections of the Uffizi and the Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence, the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Biblioteca Olivieriana in Pesaro, the Louvre, and elsewhere. The present sheet is an exceptional example of Cecco Bravo’s manner of drawing, characterized by the use of a combination of red and black chalk and a feathery, seemingly insubstantial depiction of form; a distinctive technique that, in the words of one scholar, ‘challenged the rigor of Florentine disegno in its fine disregard for contour.’3 Also typical of the artist is the slightly curved posture of the standing saint. A closely comparable drawing by Cecco Bravo of Saint Bridget of Sweden, also in red and black chalk, is in a private collection in Lisbon4, while a stylistically and thematically comparable drawing of Five Martyr Saints is in the Louvre5. While this drawing is unrelated to any surviving painting by the artist, it may be noted that in 1655, near the end of his career, Cecco Bravo received a commission for an altarpiece of The Madonna with Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria for a chapel in the church of San Romano in Pisa, where it remains today6. At the same time, he also painted two canvases of standing female saints for the entrance walls of the same chapel; a Saint Lucy and a Saint Agatha, both of which were still in situ in 1887, when they are mentioned in a guide to the church published that year, but are now lost. The present sheet may have been a study for the latter painting.
29 GIOVANNI FRANCESCO BARBIERI, called IL GUERCINO Cento 1591-1666 Bologna A Young Man with an Owl on a Stick Pen and brown ink and brown wash. Inscribed B. del Guercino and numbered L20 in brown ink on the verso. 225 x 155 mm. (8 7/ 8 x 6 1/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: An unidentified collector’s mark faintly stamped at the lower right; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 1 April 1987, lot 12 (as Attributed to Guercino); Marcello Aldega, Rome, and Margot Gordon, New York, in 1988; Private collection. LITERATURE: David M. Stone, Guercino: Master Draftsman. Works from North American Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge and elsewhere, 1991, p.223, no.171, illustrated pl.K. EXHIBITED: Stanford University, Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Classic Taste: Drawings and Decorative Arts from the Collection of Horace Brock, March-May, 2000; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.100. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Il Guercino (‘the squinter’) because he was cross-eyed, was by the second decade of the 17th century one of the foremost painters in the province of Emilia. Born in Cento, a small town between Bologna and Ferrara, Guercino was, in his early work, strongly influenced by the paintings of Ludovico Carracci. In 1617 he was summoned to Bologna by Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, and there painted a number of important altarpieces. When Ludovisi was elected Pope Gregory XV in 1621, Guercino was summoned to Rome to work for the pontiff and his nephew, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi. It was in Rome that Guercino painted some of his most celebrated works, notably the ceiling fresco of Aurora in the Casino Ludovisi and the large altarpiece of The Burial and Reception into Heaven of Saint Petronilla for Saint Peter’s. The papacy of Gregory XV was brief, however, and on the death of the Pope in 1623 Guercino returned to Cento, though he continued to receive commissions from patrons throughout Italy and beyond. He remained in Cento for twenty years, turning down offers of employment at the royal courts in London and Paris. Following the death of Guido Reni in 1642, Guercino moved his studio to Bologna, where he received commissions for religious pictures of the sort that Reni had specialized in, and was soon established as the city’s leading painter. Guercino was undoubtedly among the most prolific draughtsmen of the 17th century in Italy, and more drawings by him survive today than by any other Italian artist of the period. He seems to have assiduously kept all of his drawings – figural and compositional studies, landscapes, caricatures and genre scenes – throughout his long career, and to have only parted with a few of them. Guercino’s drawings have always been greatly admired by collectors and connoisseurs; the 18th century amateur Pierre-Jean Mariette noted of the artist that ‘Ce peintre a...une plume tout-à-fait séduisante’. The present sheet belongs with a group of character studies, probably drawn from life, which Guercino produced throughout his career, and which reflect the artist’s acute observation of the people he saw around him in his native town of Cento. One of the artist’s biographers, Giovanni Battista Passeri, noted of a visit to Guercino’s studio that he saw there ‘a number of drawings by his hand, of dances, festivals, and weddings, all decorously conducted in his Rocca di Cento, imitating the ideas, the demeanour and the appearance of these rustics, and of these foretane of the country, which were, in truth, curious and wellcaptured.’1 In these genre studies of shopkeepers, peasants, labourers and others, Guercino may have been influenced by the example of the Carracci, who were among the first to recognize that peasants, village folk and similar mundane characters were interesting artistic subjects in their own right. Often sympathetic yet sometimes verging on caricature, Guercino’s genre drawings were not generally
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intended as studies for paintings but were produced rather as visual exercises and for his own amusement. As one scholar has noted, ‘For [Guercino], genre drawings were worth executing for their own sake and for their entertainment value. One cannot help but notice the sincere humanity and “down-home” flavor of many of Guercino’s sketches... He seems genuinely to have enjoyed the provincial community where he grew up and learned to paint.’2 Nicholas Turner has noted that Guercino’s genre drawings ‘are characterized by a rapid touch, an economy of means, and a remarkable acuteness of observation, many of them clearly based on scenes taken directly from life. The foibles of the men, women, and children of all rank who were his unwitting subjects are captured with great immediacy, which has always given these drawings a special appeal. Although the nobles, gentlefolk, and clergy, largely from his native Cento, came under his powerful scrutiny, the most frequent subjects were the peasant folk, or contadini, for whom it seems the painter had a particular affection.’3 The vigorous and confident pen and wash technique of the present sheet provides a fine example of the gustosa facilità for which another of the artist’s biographers, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, praised the artist’s drawings. The effect of bright sunlight is created by the contrast of dark areas of different shades of brown wash, applied with the point of the brush, with the reserve of the paper left untouched to form highlights. The inconography of the drawing is difficult to elucidate, although the presence of the owl, as a symbol of wisdom, may indicate that the man is a fortune-teller. (It has also been suggested that the man may be trying to ward off the malocchio, or evil eye, while owls were sometimes tied to poles by birdhunters at attract small birds, such as larks.) A similar subject is found in a recently identified early painting by Guercino of A Landscape with Rinaldo Corradino on a Mule, datable to c.1615-1617, which is now in the Pinacoteca Civica in Cento4. The painting depicts Rinaldo Corradino – a close friend of Annibale Carracci, who made several caricature drawings of him – riding a mule and holding in front of him a staff on which rests a small owl. As Fausto Gozzi has noted of this painting, ‘[Guercino] is faithful to his story of Ronaldo Corradino’s journeys by mule, from one village to the next, laden with the apparatus of his work [including] a little owl, symbol of wisdom and therefore useful for foretelling the future in peasant markets.’5 A fortune-teller may also be the subject of a pen drawing attributed to Guercino, in the Art Institute of Chicago, which depicts a group of figures surrounding a man with an owl on a stick6. A drawing of a similar subject by a follower of Guercino, depicting a man feeding an owl perched on a stick, appeared at auction in Italy in 20127. While Guercino’s genre drawings are hard to accurately date, the present sheet is likely to date from the early 1630’s8, and almost certainly to the twenty-year period when the artist was working in Cento, before he transferred his studio to Bologna in the early 1640’s. Among stylistically comparable pen and wash drawings of this Cento period are a Standing Beggar at Windsor Castle9, a Caricature of a Young Man Wading Through a River in a British private collection10, and a study of Dante Standing in Profile to the Right in a private collection in Los Angeles11. Guercino’s drawings of this type ‘appear to have been made for the amusement of the artist and his friends, almost as a tribute to his own ingenuity and wit...With extraordinary economy of means Guercino recorded his acute observations of the people and events of everyday provincial life, filtered by a sharp perception of the comic. His biographer, Malvasia, chronicled the artist’s compassionate nature, his empathy for the poor and needy, his humility and his curiosity in his surroundings, and many of these qualities emerge in these informal sketches.’12 As another scholar has aptly noted, ‘Given that Guercino traveled little and spent so much of his career in provincial Cento, it is no surprise that his caricatures and genre scenes reflect local life rather than political subjects. A gentle, sensitive humor and humanity characterize his work in this field and indeed pervade his entire graphic output.’13
30 CLEMENTE BOCCIARDO Genoa c.1600-1658 Pisa A Male Nude Kneeling on a Rock, His Arms Raised Black chalk, heightened with touches of white chalk, on light brown paper, laid down on a 17th or 18th century Italian mount. Inscribed di Clemente Bocciardi do il Clementone in brown ink in the lower margin of the mount. 400 x 276 mm. (15 3/4 x 10 7/ 8 in.) Watermark: A cross on six mounts. PROVENANCE: An anonymous 17th or 18th century Florentine collection, possibly that of Giuseppe Santini, Florence1; Comte Eugène d’Oultremont, Château de Presles, Aiseau-Presle, Belgium2, and thence by descent until 1985; Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Nobleman’), London, Christie’s, 12 December 1985, lot 217; Margot Gordon, New York, in 1990. Nicknamed Il Clementone, apparently because of his large size, Clemente Bocciardo was trained in the studio of Bernardo Strozzi in Genoa. On the evidence of a signed painting of The Madonna and Child in Glory with Saints, dated 1623 and today in the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, the influence of Strozzi was apparent in Bocciardo’s earliest independent works. According to his biographers Raffaele Soprani and Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, Bocciardo joined Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione in Rome in the early 1630’s. After a few years of working in Rome, he returned to Genoa where, as Soprani and Ratti note, he painted ‘vari quadri di storie, e di capricci con si bella invenzione’. Among the handful of recorded works of this period in Genoa are a Last Supper painted for the Oratory of the Confraternity of San Germano and a Corpus Domini for the church of Sant’Andrea. Bocciardo also established an Accademia del Nudo, or school of life drawing, in his Genoese studio. Much of the second half of Bocciardo’s career was spent in Tuscany. He worked for some time in Florence before settling around 1639 in Pisa, where he remained until his death in 1658. One of Bocciardo’s first works in Pisa was a canvas of Saint John the Baptist, dated 1639, painted for the church of Santa Croce in Fossabanda and today in the Palazzo della Prefettura in Pisa. Other significant works in Pisa include paintings of The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian in the Certosa and The Virgin Appearing to Saint Charles Borromeo in the Duomo, as well as an Intercession of the Virgin in the church of San Matteo and a Madonna of the Rosary, completed in 1655 for a Pisan confraternity and today housed in the church of San Salvatore. Bocciardo also painted several easel pictures of both religious and secular subjects for private patrons, as well as a number of commissioned portraits. Perhaps intended to represent a satyr, the present sheet has the appearance of having been drawn from a posed model, and may perhaps be related to Bocciardo’s establishment of a school of life drawing in his Genoese studio in the later 1630’s. However, the way in which the figure is drawn, with its strong echoes of contemporary Florentine draughtsmanship of the period, would argue in favour of a later date in the 1640’s or 1650’s, when the artist was working in Tuscany. The distinctive 17th or 18th century Florentine mount that surrounds the sheet, and its likely provenance from a Florentine collection, would further suggest that the drawing may date from Bocciardo’s later years. Drawings by Clemente Bocciardo are very rare. A self-portrait in red and black chalk, part of an extensive series of drawn portraits and self-portraits of artists assembled by the 18th century Florentine collector and historian Niccolò Gabburri, is in the British Museum3. A pair of drawings of pastoral and mythological subjects in the Louvre, of a particularly Castiglionesque nature, have been tentatively attributed to Bocciardo4.
31 NEAPOLITAN SCHOOL First half of the 17th Century Studies of Three Heads: A Woman, a Satyr and a Youth Red chalk. Laid down. 228 x 179 mm. (9 x 7 in.) The artist responsible for this fascinating red chalk drawing, which is of very fine quality, would appear to have been working in Naples around the middle of the 17th century, and to have come under the influence of Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) and, in particular, the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera (15911652). In 1616, after several years working in Parma, Bologna and Rome, Ribera settled in Naples, then under Spanish rule, and was to live and work there for the remainder of his career. Known in Italy as Lo Spagnoletto, his impact on local artists was both profound and longlasting. The distinct influence of Ribera is evident in this drawing, which was perhaps intended for an engraving, but none of the heads seem to be copies after any known drawings or prints by the Spanish master. An attribution to one of the Italian artists strongly infuenced by Ribera, Cesare Fracanzano (c.16051651), has been suggested for the present sheet. Active in Naples for much of his career, Cesare and his younger brother Francesco Fracanzano (1612-1657) are thought to have joined the Neapolitan workshop of Ribera around 1622. The head of the satyr in the present sheet is indeed very similar to that in a lost painting of Two Satyrs (fig.1), attributed to Cesare Fracanzano by Nicola Spinosa1, as well as in a canvas of The Satyr’s Family (fig.2) by the same artist, today in a Neapolitan private collection2. A red chalk drawing of a man wearing a tall cap, formerly in the Instituto Jovellanos in Gijón and destroyed during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, has been tentatively attributed to both Cesare and Francesco Fracanzano, and displays some stylistic similarities with the present sheet3.
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32 SALVATOR ROSA Arenella 1615-1673 Rome A Standing Halberdier Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over a black chalk underdrawing. Laid down on an 18th century (Richardson) mount, inscribed Salvator Rosa in brown ink at the bottom and with the shelfmark D. in brown ink on the reverse. Further inscribed From the collection of Jonathan Richardson, the Painter in brown ink in the bottom margin of the mount, and faintly inscribed Lot 120 in brown ink on the reverse of the mount. 147 x 90 mm. (5 3/4 x 3 1/ 2 in.) PROVENANCE: Jonathan Richardson, Senior, London (Lugt 2184), with his shelfmark (cf. Lugt 2983 and 2984) and on his mount1; Probably his sale, London, Christopher Cock, 22 January to 8 February 1747; A. Scott Carter (according to a note on the backing sheet)2; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 26 November 1970, lot 42 (bt. F. Challener); John Appleby, Jersey; Thence by descent. LITERATURE: Michael Mahoney, The Drawings of Salvator Rosa, New York and London, 1977, Vol.I, p.440, no.45.8; Vol.II, fig.45.8 (as whereabouts unknown); Richard W. Wallace, The Etchings of Salvator Rosa, Princeton, 1979, p.168, no.37a (not illustrated); Paolo Bellini and Richard W. Wallace, ed., The Illustrated Bartsch. Vol.45 - Commentary: Italian Masters of the Seventeenth Century, 1990, p.393 under no. .057 (Bartsch 44). Salvator Rosa studied in Naples with his brother-in-law Francesco Fracanzano, as well as probably with Jusepe de Ribera and Aniello Falcone, before making two trips to Rome in the second half of the 1630’s. The following decade found him working in Florence, where among his patrons was Giovanni Carlo de’ Medici. It was in Florence that Rosa developed an interest in historical and mythological subjects, as well as in themes of witchcraft and the occult. An eccentric personality, he moved in literary and intellectual circles, which in turn inspired his idiosyncratic artistic vision. Returning to Rome in 1649, Rosa continued to paint unusual, often fantastical or macabre subjects alongside the paintings of battle scenes and wild landscapes with which he had first made a name for himself. In the late 1660’s his compositions became darker and more oppressive. Also a gifted and prolific printmaker, Rosa produced over one hundred etchings, almost all of which were published and widely distributed in his lifetime. Rosa was a remarkable draughtsman, and his spirited, exuberant drawings were highly praised by connoisseurs even in his own day. The bulk of the nine hundred or so surviving drawings by the artist are figure studies, usually in his preferred medium of pen and ink, and often enlivened with touches of wash. Many of the drawings from the early part of his career are signed, and these may have been sold to collectors or presented as gifts to friends or patrons. However, almost no signed drawings dating from after 1649 exist, and it is thought that, after his return to Rome, Rosa chose to keep most of his drawings for himself, and not part with them. The present sheet is a preparatory study for an etching (fig.1) from Salvator Rosa’s celebrated Figurine series3; a group of sixty-two etchings of soldiers, peasants and other figures, depicted either individually or in groups of two, three or more. These etchings, which were published with a dedication to the artist’s friend and patron, the Roman banker and art collector Carlo de’ Rossi4, can be dated to Rosa’s years in Rome, around 1656-1657. As Helen Langdon has noted of the Figurine etchings, ‘This series, which has no preconceived theme, was a capriccio, or bravura display of fantasy and improvisation...a dazzling array of figures, a masterful display of variety of pose and mood, of gestures and groupings. Rosa shows warriors standing, walking, beckoning, gesturing, seated on rocks, asleep or shrouded in melancholy; they wear archaicizing dress that blends vaguely antique and Renaissance armour with exotic and imaginative detail, and carry war hammers, maces and swords...to the seventeenth-century viewer they would perhaps have seemed an evocation of the knights and warriors of chivalric romance.’5
In every case, the protagonists of Rosa’s Figurine etchings are depicted removed from any context or setting. As Richard Wallace has noted ‘They look as they do because they derive from the drawn and painted figures whose purpose it was to populate Rosa’s landscapes, harbor scenes, and battles and to give these settings life and vivacity by their energetic and varied postures, gestures, and groupings. The Figurine are in a sense extracts from the paintings. It is as if Rosa decided to isolate these figures from the context that brought them into being in order to elevate them to the status of complete works of art in themselves.’6 It has been suggested that, apart from helping to spread Rosa’s fame, these Figurine etchings may also have served to rebut the claims, made by the artist’s critics, that he was merely a landscape painter, without the ability to depict figures. As Wallace has observed, ‘Rosa was very touchy about his reputation as a figure painter...With the Figurine he undoubtedly meant to show everyone, including his detractors...that he could master the human figure in an almost infinite variety of poses and expressive states.’7 Often acquired as a complete set of prints and bound into albums, Rosa’s Figurine etchings remained popular with collectors well into the 18th century. Around forty of Rosa’s preparatory drawings for individual etchings in the Figurine series survive. All are of identical dimensions to the etchings, and in most respects very close to the final print, albeit in reverse. (Interestingly, however, almost none of the preparatory drawings appear to have been indented with a stylus for transfer to the copper plate.) Other preparatory drawings for the Figurine etchings are today in the collections of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, and elsewhere.
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33 DOMENICO MARIA CANUTI Bologna 1620-1684 Bologna The Parting of Rinaldo and Armida Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over an underdrawing in red chalk. Inscribed canuti f.18 in brown ink on the verso, backed. 189 x 258 mm. (7 1/ 2 x 10 1/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: A fragment of an unidentified collector’s mark stamped at the upper left; Private collection, Hamburg. Domenico Maria Canuti trained with Guido Reni, Guercino and Giovanni Andrea Sirani in Bologna, where – apart from two periods in Rome in the 1640’s and 1670’s and some time spent in Padua in the 1660’s – he worked for most of his career. Canuti’s first known painting is an Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia for a church in Imola, and although he continued to paint both altarpieces and easel pictures throughout his career, it was as a fresco painter of illusionistic ceiling decorations that he came to be best known. Among his most important patrons were the Pepoli, a noble Bolognese family who commissioned a series of frescoes for the Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande. These included the artist’s most famous work; an Apotheosis of Hercules on Olympus for the ceiling of the gran salone of the palace, painted between 1660 and 1670. The fame of this project led to a number of Roman commissions, and Canuti worked in Rome for five years from 1672 onwards. Among his patrons there were the Colonna and Altieri familes, and he also painted a vault fresco of The Apotheosis of Saint Dominic for the church of Santi Domenico e Sisto, completed in 1675. The following year he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, but was back in Bologna the following year. The remainder of Canuti’s flourishing career was spent working mainly on the decoration of the monastery of San Michele in Bosco. Among his many students were Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Giovanni Antonio Burrini. Canuti was known for his inventive compositions, and produced a number of drawings on literary or mythological themes, most of which do not seem to have been intended as studies for paintings and may have been produced as finished works of art for sale to collectors. The present sheet is one of several drawings by Canuti depicting scenes from the story of the love between the Christian knight Rinaldo and the sorceress Armida, taken from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata. These include another drawing of The Parting of Rinaldo and Armida (fig.1) in the Louvre1, different in composition but very similar in style and technique to the present sheet, as well as a drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin2 and two drawings in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm3. A drawing of Rinaldo Leaving the Fainting Armida in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle4 may also be added to this group. Among other stylistically comparable drawings by Canuti is another study of a subject from Tasso (possibly The Condemnation of Sophronia) and a Battle Scene, both in the Louvre5, in addition to a group of five drawings of scenes from the life of Saint George in Stockholm6 and a drawing of The Sack of Troy in a private collection7.
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34 CARLO MARATTA Camerano 1625-1713 Rome Recto: The Head of a Young Boy Verso: The Penitent Saint Peter Red chalk, heightened with touches of white chalk, on blue paper. Inlaid on an 18th century mount. Inscribed Di Carlo Maratti in brown ink on both sides of the mount. 267 x 204 mm. (10 1/ 2 x 8 in.) [sheet] 413 x 319 mm. (16 1/4 x 12 1/ 2 in.) [mount] PROVENANCE: From an album of drawings by Maratta and his circle, probably assembled in the early 18th century and later in the possession of the Shirley family, Ettington Park, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire1; The album acquired from Lt. Col. Evelyn Charles Shirley on 26 February 1937 by P. & D. Colnaghi, London2; The present sheet acquired from Colnaghi’s by Hans M. Calmann, London, on 21 April 1943 for £15; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 30 March 1975, lot 60; Agnew’s, London, in 1977; Private collection, Oxford; Private collection, New York. LITERATURE: James Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1983, Vol.I, pp.170-171, under no.168, note 2. EXHIBITED: Barnard Castle, The Bowes Museum and Newcastle, Hatton Gallery, Pleasure in Drawings, 1980, no.9; Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum, For the Love of Drawing: Drawings from an Oxfordshire Private Collection, 2002. Born in the Marches, Carlo Maratta (or Maratti) entered the Roman studio of Andrea Sacchi in 1636 as a young boy of eleven, and was to remain in Rome for almost the whole of his career. His reputation was established in 1650 with his first public commission, an altarpiece of The Adoration of the Shepherds for the church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami. He continued to work with Sacchi even as an independent artist, and took over the elder artist’s studio on his death in 1661. Three years later Maratta was elected principe of the Accademia di San Luca, by which time he had established one of the largest and most successful workshops in Rome. He enjoyed a remarkably successful career, receiving important commissions for altarpieces, cabinet pictures and frescoes. Appointed painter to seven popes, as well as King Louis XIV of France, Maratta counted among his patrons the most illustrious Roman families. He was also in great demand as a portrait painter, particularly among English visitors to Rome. Following the death of Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1680 Maratta became the leading artist in the city, and such was his stature that in 1701 he was awarded the unprecedented honour of being named principe for life of the Accademia di San Luca. His influence remained strong well into the 18th century, as seen in the work of his many pupils and followers, known collectively as the Maratteschi. In his posthumously published life of the artist, Giovan Pietro Bellori notes that, even as a young artist, Maratta’s skill as a draughtsman was readily apparent: ‘his drawings were already held in great esteem because there was no one who equaled him...the skill of a master was apparent in them...’3 A prolific draughtsman, he had a preference for red chalk, and made numerous studies of drapery, anatomy and pose for each of his paintings. He seems to have jealously guarded his drawings, and kept most of them in his studio until his death, after which many passed into the possession of his daughter Faustina, while others were kept by some of his pupils4. The majority of Maratta’s surviving drawings, the provenance of which can often be traced back to the artist’s studio, are concentrated in five large groups; in the Louvre, the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf and the Real Academia de San Fernando in Madrid.
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Describing the present sheet as ‘a fine example of the artist’s later graphic manner’5, the Maratta scholar Stella Rudolph has noted that the head of a putto on the recto is a preparatory study for his painting of The Death of Saint Joseph (fig.1), dated 1676, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna6. The painting was commissioned from Maratta by the papal legate Cardinal Alberizzi for the private chapel of the Empress Eleonora Gonzaga of Mantua, wife of the Emperor Ferdianand III, in the Hofburg in Vienna7. The recto of this drawing, which should be viewed horizontally, is a study for the small winged putto that appears just to the left of centre of the composition, over the bed of the dying saint and just below the foot of an angel. Other studies for the painting, including drawings for Christ, the Virgin and several of the angels, are in Düsseldorf8. Also in the same collection is a similar study in black chalk of the head of a young boy9, apparently the same model as seen here, which is a preparatory drawing for a painting of The Death of Saints Blaise and Sebastian of c.1680 in the Genoese church of Santa Maria di Carignano. Among comparable studies of young children by Maratta is a drawing in the Philadelphia Museum of Art10. The study of a penitent saint on the verso remains unconnected to any surviving work by Maratta, and would appear to be a study for an unknown painting. Although a somewhat similar praying figure appears, in reverse, in Maratta’s painting of The Death of the Virgin in the Villa Albani in Rome11, painted around 1686, the verso of the present sheet should instead be dated several years earlier, and to the same period – namely, the second half of the 1670’s – as the study on the recto. Stella Rudolph has likened the drawing on the verso with some of Maratta’s initial studies in red chalk for the pendentive mosaics in the Cappella della Presentazione in St. Peter’s, begun in 167712.
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35 PIETRO ANTONIO DE’ PIETRI Premia 1663/65-1716 Rome Recto: The Miracle of the Santa Casa of Loreto Verso: The Virgin and Child Carried by Angels Pen and brown ink and brown wash. The verso in pen and brown ink and brown wash, with touches of white heightening. Traces of a framing line in brown ink at the left edge. Signed(?) and inscribed di Pietro de Pietri / No. 241 in brown ink on the verso. Further inscribed Pietro di Pietri and numbered N 4 in pencil on the verso. 421 x 272 mm. (16 5/ 8 x 10 3/4 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot [Antoine Ader], 27 June 2001, lot 74; W. M. Brady and Co., New York; Private collection. EXHIBITED: Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.118. Born in the Piedmontese town of Premia, Pietro Antonio de’ Pietri arrived in Rome as a youth, studying first with Giuseppe Ghezzi and then the little-known Cremonese painter Angelo Massarotti, before entering the studio of Carlo Maratta ar the age of fifteen. By the middle of the 1680’s he was recognized, alongside Giuseppe Passeri, as among the most talented of Maratta’s pupils and followers, the so-called Maratteschi. In his biography of the artist, Lione Pascoli noted that de’ Pietri remained a devoted admirer of Maratta’s art throughout his career, and indeed his style as both painter and draughtsman was indebted to that of his master. He was established as an independent artist by the end of the 1680’s, and produced altarpieces and frescoes for several Roman churches, including San Clemente, San Pietro in Vincoli and Santa Maria in Via Lata. (In the early years of the 18th century he was also one of several artists who assisted Maratta on the restoration of Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican Stanze.) Elected to the Accademia di San Luca in 1711, de’ Pietri received a number of important commissions from Pope Clement XI Albani, notably an altarpiece of the Holy Trinity for the papal chapel in the Palazzo Quirinale, as well as from cardinals and members of important Roman families such as the Pallavicini, Ottoboni and Imperiali. The artist’s biographer, Nicola Pio, records that de’ Pietri’s paintings were particularly popular with English visitors to Rome, but that he refused a generous offer of 100 scudi a month to work in England, since he felt that he could not easily practice his religion there. Among his last important commissions was a vault fresco of The Assumption of the Virgin for the Roman church of Santa Maria delle Fornaci, begun in 1712. Towards the end of his career de’ Pietri produced a small number of engravings, mostly of devotional images, and also provided designs for other printmakers. Since relatively few paintings by the artist survive, Pietro de’ Pietri is better known today as a draughtsman than as a painter. Many of his drawings are composition studies in pen and ink, while he also produced studies of heads and other details in black or red chalk, or a combination of the two, often drawn on blue paper. As Ann Percy has noted of the artist’s drawings, ‘his style is clearly indebted to Maratta, although his manner, softer and more tentative, lacks Maratta’s usual toughness and vigor in the handling of chalk or pen.’1 Like his master Maratta, de’ Pietri produced several preparatory studies for each of his paintings, and many of his drawings display an attractive, painterly technique. The biographer Nicola Pio, who knew the artist personally and collected his drawings, praised Pietro de’ Pietri’s draughtsmanship, describing his work as ‘raro e perfetto nel disegno’. As has been noted by one modern scholar, ‘According to Pio, Pietri’s drawings were both strange and perfect in expression, composition, in their strong and handsome coloration, in the precision of the forms and in the careful study of the characters.’2 Large groups of drawings by the artist are today in the collections of the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, the Louvre, and the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.
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This large, double-sided drawing, which may be counted among the finest examples of Pietro de’ Pietri’s draughtsmnship, is a study for a now-lost painting of The Madonna of Loreto. Although the finished work no longer survives, a number of preparatory studies for the picture are known. An oil sketch (fig.1) is in the collection of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf3, as is a preparatory study (fig.2) in pen and brown ink and wash4, while further studies for The Madonna of Loreto are found on both sides of a double-sided sheet in the Louvre5. As Dieter Graf has noted of these preparatory drawings by Pietro de’ Pietri, to which the present sheet may now be added, ‘Apparently, the artist drew the sheets in quick succession, deftly varying the poses of the figures and details of the building from one sketch to another.’6 The present sheet is the largest and most finished of the handful of extant pen studies for this lost painting by Pietro de’ Pietri. A similar arrangement of angels supporting the Santa Casa and the Virgin and Child is found in an altarpiece by Pietro de’ Pietri of The Madonna of Loreto Appearing to Saint Christopher, datable to the first years of the 18th century, in the church of San Giovanni Battista in the coastal town of Civitanova Marche, west of Macerata7. This was one of several commissions de’ Pietri seems to have received from Marchigian patrons.
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36 GIUSEPPE PASSERI Rome 1654-1714 Rome The Virgin and Child with Saints Red chalk, pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, with framing lines in brown ink. A study of a mounted (female?) warrior in brown ink over red chalk, and a pair(?) of figures in red chalk, on the verso, backed. The sheet extended at the bottom edge, and made up at the lower right corner. Laid down. 230 x 226 mm. (9 1/ 8 x 8 7/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: An unidentified collector’s mark R (similar to Lugt 2170; Jonathan Richardson, Junior) stamped in black ink at the lower right; An unidentified collector’s mark OE (in ligature) stamped in black ink on the reverse of the old backing sheet; Yvonne ffrench, London, in 1961; Burnett Pavitt, London; Bequeathed by him to the Royal College of Music, London; Their sale, London, Christie’s, 8 July 2003, lot 39; Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., London, in 2004; Private collection. Giuseppe Passeri studied with his uncle, the painter and biographer Giovanni Battista Passeri, before entering the studio of Carlo Maratta in Rome. He soon became one of Maratta’s favorite students, working with him on a number of significant projects, although his style was less indebted to the master than most of Maratta’s followers. Passeri’s earliest known dated paintings were executed for the Palazzo Barberini in Rome in 1678, and he was to work in the city for almost his entire career. Elected to the Accademia di San Luca in 1693, he received numerous commissions for religious pictures, such as a Baptism of Constantine painted for the Albani chapel in San Sebastiano fuori le Mura. Other Roman churches for which Passeri painted altarpieces include Saint Peter’s, Santa Maria in Vallicella, San Francesco a Ripa, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Santa Caterina a Monte Magnanapoli and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. He also painted elaborate ceiling frescoes for the presbytery of the Duomo at Viterbo, completed in 1699 but destroyed during the Second World War, and received commissions for mural projects to decorate the palaces and villas of a number of Roman families. Passeri worked for Pope Clement VII, who in 1700 appointed him pittore della camera apostolica. In addition to his large-scale work, Passeri also produced cabinet pictures and portraits. A large collection of drawings by the artist, numbering over 1,100 sheets and representing some two-thirds of his extant oeuvre as a draughtsman, is in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, while other significant groups are in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle and the Albertina in Vienna. The present sheet is a fine example of Passeri’s highly pictorial manner of draughtsmanship, displaying the artist’s characteristic use of red chalk combined with an extensive application of white heightening. (As one recent scholar has noted, ‘Bordering on the confectionary in their profuse use of white gouache, these [drawings] attain an unusually rich tonal and chromatic range close to that of an oil sketch.’1) Although Passeri’s preparatory drawings tend to be very close to the paintings for which they are studies, the present sheet remains unrelated to any surviving work by the artist, although a red chalk drawing in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, showing the Virgin and Child with a kneeling male saint, may perhaps be related to the same composition2. Among stylistically comparable drawings is a Virgin and Child with Saints Theresa and Cajetan(?), also in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid3. The pen study of a mounted warrior on the verso, now partly obscured by the backing of the sheet, may be tentatively related to a similar figure in a drawing of A King Before a Walled Town in Düsseldorf4. That drawing, which may represent a scene from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, is itself related to two drawings at Windsor Castle5. A similar mounted figure also appears in a drawing of Clorinda Frees Sophronia and Olindo at Holkham Hall in Norfolk6.
37 AURELIANO MILANI Bologna 1675-1749 Bologna The Death of Saint Francis, after Annibale Carracci Black chalk, with stumping, heightened with touches of white. 254 x 183 mm. (10 x 7 1/4 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 19 April 1994, lot 97; P. & D. Colnaghi, London; Private collection. Trained in Bologna by a succession of minor painters, Aureliano Milani received his true artistic education from his close study of the Carracci. Gianpietro Zanotti, in his biography of the artist, noted that the young Milani made drawn copies after the works of the Carracci (‘a disegnare le opere de’ suddetti Carracci’), and in particular the frescoes of the Palazzo Fava in Bologna. Milani’s first datable work is an Annunciation in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna, painted in 1705. Relatively few paintings from Milani’s early years as an independent artist in Bologna survive, however, of which the most important is a Saint Jerome and the Blessed Ghisilieri in the church of Santa Maria della Vita, painted around 1718. The following year Milani settled in Rome, where he spent the remainder of his career, painting altarpieces for local churches and undertaking several decorative projects, notably a fresco cycle of the Labours of Hercules for the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, completed in 1732. He also painted a number of genre subjects, typified by a Market Scene in a Roman Square, now in the Museo Civico in Pesaro. Aureliano Milani’s drawings were highly praised by another biographer, Luigi Crespi, who noted that ‘his drawings are equal to those of any great master, for their character, for their immediacy, for their magnitude, and for the ease of execution, with which they are touched, heightened and shadowed.’1 Although early sources note several 18th century collections in which drawings by Milani could be found, relatively few examples are known today; these show the artist to have been an important precursor of a later Bolognese tradition of draughtsmanship. The delicate handling of stumped black chalk in this drawing is typical of Aureliano Milani’s draughtsmanship. Hugo Chapman has pointed out that the composition is based on a lost painting by Annibale Carracci of The Death of Saint Francis of c.1597-1598, which is unrecorded in early sources but is known through a large reproductive print by Gérard Audran (fig.1), published in 16642. Given Milani’s close study of the Carracci in his youth, this drawing is likely to date from the early part of his career, when he was working in Bologna. Among stylistically comparable drawings by Milani is a Christ Appearing to Saint Pellegrino Laziosi in the Museo del Prado in Madrid3.
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38 MARCO RICCI Bellunno 1676-1730 Venice Caricature of a Man in a Tall Hat Pen and brown ink, over traces of an underdrawing in black chalk. 161 x 110 mm. (6 3/ 8 x 4 3/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Artemis Fine Arts, London, in 2003; Maida and George Abrams, Boston. Marco Ricci received his training in the studio of his uncle Sebastiano Ricci, with whom he often later collaborated. Primarily a landscape painter, Marco often completed the landscape backgrounds in Sebastiano’s canvases. He worked in Rome, Florence and Venice, and in 1708 made the first of two trips to England, where he worked with Gianantonio Pellegrini on the decoration of Castle Howard and designed scenery for the Italian Opera at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket. He visited England for a second time with Sebastiano in 1712, and returned to settle in Venice in 1717. Together with his uncle and several other prominent artists, he was commissioned by the entrepeneur Owen McSwiny to paint a series of allegorical tombs dedicated to prominent English noblemen; his Monument to the Duke of Devonshire was completed in 1725. Ricci seems to have taken up printmaking around 1723, perhaps encouraged by the publisher Anton Maria Zanetti. Only thirty-three etchings by him are known, twenty of which were included in the Varia Marci Ricci Pictoris Praestantissimi Experimenta, published in Venice in 1730, the year of the artist’s death. Among artists working in Venice, only a handful produced caricature drawings in pen and ink, notably Giambattista Tiepolo and Anton Maria Zanetti. Like Tiepolo, Marco Ricci may have been inspired by the caricature drawings of such 17th century artists as Annibale Carracci, Pier Francesco Mola and Guercino. Although not related to a print, the present sheet is likely to date from the last years of Ricci’s career, when he produced most of his printed work. Among stylistically comparable figure drawings by the artist are a study of Three Men Resting near a Pyramid in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, MA1 and a drawing of Pilgrims Resting in the Princeton University Art Museum2; the latter was reproduced as a print by Ricci3. Also of the same type is a signed pen drawing of Peasants Before a Portable Shrine in the British Museum4, which was also a study for an etching, while of closer dimensions to the present sheet is a pen drawing of A Slovenian Soldier (fig.1) in the Museo Correr in Venice5.
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39 FRANCESCO MONTI Bologna 1685-1768 Brescia Study of a Male Nude Holding a Pole Black chalk and charcoal, with stumping. Inscribed (in a modern hand) G. B. Piazzetta in pencil on the verso. 420 x 293 mm. (16 1/ 2 x 11 1/ 2 in.) PROVENANCE: Richard von Kühlmann, Ohlstadt1; Herbert List, Munich (Lugt 4063), his drystamp at the lower right2; Acquired in 1972 with the rest of List’s collection of drawings by Ursula and Adolf Ratjen, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, for Wolfgang Ratjen, Munich; The Stiftung Ratjen, Vaduz, Liechtenstein; Flavia Ormond, London, in 1996; Private collection. LITERATURE: Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, and elsewhere, Zeichnungen alter Meister aus Deutschem Privatbesitz, exhibition catalogue, 1965-1966, p.15, no.37, illustrated fig.111 (as Giovanni Battista Piazzetta); Mary Cazort Taylor, ‘Some Drawings by Francesco Monti and the Soft Chalk Style’, Master Drawings, Summer 1973, p.162; Marzia Faietti and Alessandro Zacchi, ed., Figure: Disegni dal Cinquecento all’ Ottocento nella Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, 1998, p.274, under no.92, illustrated (entry by Nancy Ward Neilson); Clifford S. Ackley, ‘Master drawings from the collection of Horace Wood Brock’, The Magazine Antiques, February 2009, p.56, illustrated p.56, fig.8; Horace Wood Brock, ‘The Truth about Beauty’, in Horace Wood Brock, Martin P. Levy and Clifford S. Ackley, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2009, p.13; Clifford S. Ackley, ‘The Intuitive Eye: Drawings and Paintings from the Collection of Horace Wood Brock’, in Brock, Levy and Ackley, ibid., p.90. EXHIBITED: Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Hamburg, Kunsthalle and Bremen, Kunsthalle, Zeichnungen alter Meister aus Deutschem Privatbesitz, 1965-1966, no.37 (as Giovanni Battista Piazzetta); Stanford University, Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Classic Taste: Drawings and Decorative Arts from the Collection of Horace Brock, March-May, 2000; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.2. Following a period of study in Modena with Sigismondo Caula, Francesco Monti returned in 1693 to his native Bologna, where he completed his training in the studio of Giovan Gioseffo Dal Sole. The Venetian qualities inherited from Caula remained evident in his work throughout his long and successful career. Among his important early works is the large Pentecost for the church of San Prospero in Reggio Emilia, dated 1713. His career flourished in the 1720’s, when he received a number of significant commissions for history paintings and was elected to a term as principe of the Accademia Clementina. As Dwight Miller has written, ‘Monti evolved a distinctive personal idiom, characterized by graceful figures reminiscent of the style of Parmigianino but perhaps more directly inspired by the more extravagant late Mannerist idiom of such painters as Bartholomeus Spranger and Josef Heintz I of the court of Rudolf II at Prague...Monti’s art contributed to a neo-Mannerist strain in 18th century Emilian painting; he was perhaps its most sophisticated exponent.’3 Together with such artists as Donato Creti, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Giambattista Pittoni, Canaletto, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and others, Monti contributed to a series of large allegorical paintings of imaginary tombs commemorating prominent British noblemen, commissioned by the Irish entrepeneur Owen McSwiny in the late 1720’s and 1730’s from teams of the foremost Venetian and Bolognese painters of the day. Monti also executed several paintings for churches in Bologna and the surrounding region, among them a Death of Saint Peter Martyr for San Domenico in Modena, completed in 1732. Four years later he moved to Brescia to work on the decorations, now lost, of the Palazzo Martinengo.
The success of this project led to further commissions, and Monti eventually established a flourishing practice in Brescia. The later years of his career were spent working mainly in Lombardy – in Brescia, Cremona and Bergamo – on a number of large-scale fresco commissions. Among his most significant late works is the extensive decoration of the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Brescia. Francesco Monti is perhaps better known today as a draughtsman than as a painter. As has been noted of the artist, ‘Monti’s drawing style is highly individualistic: it is based on the firm Bolognese academic tradition, but the treatment of the chalk medium, which he preferred, is handled with a particular deftness...His lightness of touch, combined with the “Neo-Mannerist” predilection for attenuated figures, produce a combination of elegance and spontaneity rare in the Bolognese tradition.’4 Monti was a prolific and gifted draughtsman, producing both figure studies in black chalk, of which the present sheet is a particularly fine example, and compositional drawings in red chalk. The present sheet may be closely compared with a group of seven academic drawings by Francesco Monti, all of similar dimensions and technique, in the collection of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna5. A characteristic of these drawings are the sophisticated, if somewhat artificial, poses and a faintly sketched landscape background (which in the case of this drawing seems to be of an architectural nature), as well as the use of various costume props such as helmets, turbans, knives or staffs. Furthermore, the same model also appears to have posed for several of the drawings of this group. Apart from the seven drawings in Bologna, a handful of other, comparable drawings of male academies in black chalk by Monti are known. These include a study of a Draped Male Nude, Wearing a Helmet and Holding a Dagger, formerly in the Horvitz collection6, and a Standing Male Nude in a Hat Holding a Staff, which appeared at auction in 19997. It has been suggested that these drawings, which are all of a similar size, may have once formed part of a large sketchbook. This distinctive group of drawings of male nudes may be dated to Monti’s Bolognese period, when he was closely associated with the Accademia Clementina in the city, and before his departure for Brescia in 1736. As Mimi Cazort has written, ‘Characteristic of the style which Monti used for these drawings, here defined in terms of the usage of the medium and called the “soft chalk style”, are the smooth blending of the chalk from dark into light areas, with secondary lighting at the edges of the darkest shadow areas and little or no visible hatching; the irregularly accented but complete chalk contour around each figure; and, a particular idiosyncracy of Monti’s, the use of vertically aligned, streaky modeling with precise attention to details of musculature.’8 The handling of black chalk in drawings such as this suggest that Monti must have seen and studied the male nude academies of his Venetian contemporary Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682-1754), and indeed many of these drawings, including the present sheet, were at one time attributed to the latter artist. As Cazort has pointed out, ‘It is safe to assume that Monti was well acquainted with Piazzetta’s drawings not only because of the Venetian artist’s prestige but because of their mutual involvement during the 1720’s in the last of the Bolognese academies, the Accademia Clementina: Piazzetta was made an honorary member of the Accademia in 1725 and Monti was elected its Principe for the years 1726-27. Since a chief requisite for the honors of the Academy was facility in draughtsmanship, academic drawings in particular, it is likely that Monti knew Piazzetta’s drawings in this mode and emulated them...Piazzetta’s attitude toward the figure and his handling of the chalk was basically a Bolognese rather than a Venetian one which can be traced in a straight line back to the Carracci and forward to the Gandolfi. It may have been precisely this “Bolognese” quality which Monti found so congenial because of his own training in the same tradition.’9
40 UBALDO GANDOLFI San Matteo della Decima 1728-1781 Ravenna Jupiter Pen and brown ink and brown wash, squared in black chalk, with traces of framing lines in brown ink. Faintly inscribed Gandolfi in black chalk at the lower left. 192 x 269 mm. (7 1/ 2 x 10 5/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Sir Robert Mond, London (Lugt 2813a), his mark on the former backing sheet; By descent to W. D. Austin; His sale, London, Christie’s, 7 April 1970, lot 87; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 18 April 1994, lot 1; P. & D. Colnaghi, London; Private collection. LITERATURE: Tancred Borenius and Rudolf Wittkower, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings by the Old Masters formed by Sir Robert Mond, London, n.d. (1937), p.61, no.249 (as school of G.B. Tiepolo); Renato Roli, Pittura Bolognese 1650-1800: Dal Cignani ai Gandolfi, Bologna, 1977, p.72, note 37 (incorrectly as a study for the Palazzo Malvezzi frescoes); Donatella Biagi Maino, Ubaldo Gandolfi, Turin, 1990, p.31, note 15; Fiesole, Palazzo Mangani, Disegni italiani del sei-settecento, exhibition catalogue, 1991, p.52, under no.23 (entry by Maria Cecilia Fabbri); Prisco Bagni, I Gandolfi: affreschi dipinti bozzetti disegni, Bologna, 1992, p.629, under no.603; Bologna, San Giorgio in Poggiale, Disegni emiliani dei secoli XVII-XVIII della Pinacoteca di Brera, exhibition catalogue, 1995, p.206, under no.74 (entry by Prisco Bagni); Florence, Mattia & Maria Novella Romano, A Selection of Master Drawings, 2014, unpaginated, under no.10. EXHIBITED: Stanford University, Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Classic Taste: Drawings and Decorative Arts from the Collection of Horace Brock, March-May, 2000; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.114. This drawing is a preparatory study, in reverse, for one of Ubaldo Gandolfi’s first independent projects, the vault fresco of Jupiter (fig.1) in the Sala dello Zodiaco of the Palazzo Malvasia in Bologna1. Around 1758 Gandolfi received the commission from the Bolognese nobleman and historian Cesare Malvasia to decorate a number of rooms in his palace. The commission called for the decoration of at least four rooms with vault frescoes of Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, and Mercury. Only Jupiter, Mars and Apollo survive today, executed in collaboration with quadraturista Flaminio Minozzi, who was responsible for the architectural elements. The work must have been completed by 1760, when Gandolfi listed the frescoes among his accomplishments in his application for admission into the Accademia Clementina. Two further drawings for the fresco of Jupiter are known. The first of these, in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan2, depicts an angry Jupiter in the act of hurling his thunderbolts, and must be an early idea for the project. The other drawing, formerly in a private Italian collection3, retains much the same composition as the present sheet, although in reverse, and as such is closer to the reclining god depicted in the fresco. The present sheet must therefore represent an intermediate stage in the development of the composition.
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41 UBALDO GANDOLFI San Matteo della Decima 1728-1781 Ravenna Design for a Monument or Frontispiece, with a Male and Female Figure Flanking a Cartouche, Three Putti Holding a Garland Above Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over an extensive underdrawing in red chalk. Inscribed G in brown ink on the verso. Laid down on an 18th century Italian mount. 300 x 210 mm. (11 3/4 x 8 1/4 in.) PROVENANCE: Antonio Certani, Bologna, in 19351; Possibly the Baronessa Emma Dantoni Camuccini, Rome; Anonymous sale, Florence, Sotheby’s, 18 October 1969, lot D43 (as Gaetano Gandolfi); Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 12 January 1990, lot 35. LITERATURE: Guido Zucchini, ed., Mostra del Settecento Bolognese, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, 1935, p.107, no.126 (as Filippo Pedrini), illustrated on the cover. EXHIBITED: Bologna, Palazzo Comunale, Mostra del Settecento Bolognese, 1935, room 17, no.126 (as Filippo Pedrini). Ubaldo Gandolfi entered the Accademia Clementina in Bologna at an early age, and by 1745 had already won a prize for figure drawing, earning two more in the next four years. Between 1749 and 1759, however, he does not figure in any records of the Accademia, and it may be supposed that he spent some of this period travelling around Italy. (His biographer Marcello Oretti notes that the artist ‘vidde Firenze, Venezia ed altre famose scuole.’) One of his first independent projects was the decoration of several rooms in the Palazzo Malvasia in Bologna, commissioned from him around 1758. Together with his younger brother Gaetano, Ubaldo visited Venice in 1760; a trip that was to have a significant impact on the artist’s later work, with its vigorous brushwork and expressive treatment of colour. Throughout much of his career Gandolfi maintained close contacts with the Accademia Clementina, where in 1761 he was appointed one of four professors of life drawing, or direttori di figura. One of his most important patrons was the Marchese Gregorio Casali, a fellow member of the Accademia Clementina, who commissioned several works from the artist, notably two large paintings of Perseus and Andromeda and Selene and Endymion for the Palazzo Pubblico in Bologna. Apart from an Apotheosis of Hercules in the Palazzo Malvezzi, relatively little of his large-scale mural decorations survive. Over a career of some thirty years, Ubaldo Gandolfi was active as a painter of frescoes, altarpieces and mythological scenes, although he never seems to have achieved the level of success enjoyed by his brother Gaetano. He also worked as a sculptor, and a handful of terracotta sculptures of saints are known today. To judge by his annotation on a photograph of the present sheet in the Witt Library, James Byam Shaw may have been the first scholar to correctly attribute this drawing to Ubaldo Gandolfi. The drawing may be compared stylistically with a handful of decorative designs by the artist, such as three drawings of fountains; one in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa and another in a private collection2, as well as a third sold at auction in 19973. Also comparable in style and technique is a rather fantastical drawing of Figures Watching a Man Spout Water from his Mouth, probably also a design for a fountain, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid4. The putti at the top of the sheet have their counterparts in a drawing by Gandolfi of Three Putti with a Medallion, also in the Prado5, and a study of A Faun Bearing a Pair of Putti on a Tray on his Head in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London6. This drawing was included in the Mostra di Settecento Bolognese, a seminal exhibition of Emilian art held in Bologna in 1935, and was illustrated as the cover of the catalogue.
42 GAETANO GANDOLFI San Matteo della Decima 1734-1802 Bologna The Head of a Young Woman in Profile Pen and brown ink. 145 x 103 mm. (5 3/4 x 4 in.) PROVENANCE: Savelli Dipinti Antichi, Bologna, in 1996. LITERATURE: Donatella Biagi Maino et al., “Idea Prima”: Disegni e modelli preparatori, pittura di tocco dal ‘500 al ‘700, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, 1996, pp.112-115; Fausto Gozzi, Ubaldo, Gaetano e Mauro Gandolfi: le incisioni, exhibition catalogue, San Matteo della Decima, 2002, unpaginated, under no.10 (‘uno straordinario disegno a penna’); Hamburg, Dr. Moeller & Cie., Meisterzeichnungen / Master Drawings, exhibition catalogue, 2009, unpaginated, under no.1, fig.1. EXHIBITED: Bologna, Savelli Dipinti Antichi, “Idea Prima”: Disegni e modelli preparatori, pittura di tocco dal ‘500 al ‘700, 1996. Aside from trips to Venice in 1760 and Paris and London in 1788, Gaetano Gandolfi seems to have worked almost exclusively in his native Bologna, where he established a prosperous career. As a student at the Accademia Clementina he won two medals for sculpture and four medals for his drawings. A brief period of study in Venice in 1760 was of great importance, and is reflected in the dynamic brushwork and rich colours of his paintings. Gandolfi received numerous commissions for altarpieces for churches throughout Emilia and elsewhere, and also worked extensively as a fresco painter. One of his first important decorative projects was a ceiling fresco of the Four Elements, painted for the Palazzo Odorici in Bologna in collaboration with the quadraturista Serafino Barozzi. This was followed by work in several other Bolognese palaces, including the Palazzo Guidotti, the Palazzo Centurione and the Palazzo Montanari. In 1776 Gandolfi painted a massive canvas of The Marriage at Cana for the refectory of the Lateran convent of San Salvatore, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. Another prominent commission was for the decoration of the cupola of the church of Santa Maria della Vita, painted between 1776 and 1779 with frescoes of The Virgin in Glory and The Sacrifice of Manoah. In the later years of his career Gandolfi also produced easel pictures of historical and mythological subjects. Throughout his life he remained actively involved in the affairs of the Accademia Clementina, where he taught a class in life drawing. He was a gifted draughtsman, and his drawings were highly prized by contemporary collectors. The present sheet may be included among a number of elaborate pen and ink drawings of studies of heads – mainly of young women, but also depicting boys, old men and children, and often with several heads on one sheet – that are among Gaetano Gandolfi’s most appealing works. As James Byam Shaw has noted, ‘these groups of heads, closely juxtaposed, evidently had a great vogue in Bologna and elsewhere in North Italy’1, and had earlier been seen in the drawings of such artists as Donato Creti. Characterized as works ‘of inventive verve and confidence of handling’2, these beautiful, highly finished drawings by Gaetano Gandolfi – some of which were signed – were probably made as autonomous works of art for sale to collectors. At the same time, however, the precise nature of the artist’s penwork made them particularly suitable for reproduction as prints, and indeed several of Gandolfi’s drawings of this sort were engraved in the 1780’s by his pupil Luigi Tadolini. It may be noted that Gaetano was already producing finished capricci drawings of this type by the 1770’s – to judge from a drawing of four heads, dated 1777, in the collection of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan – and he continued to do so until at least the late 1790’s. His son Mauro Gandolfi (1764-1834) also produced several drawings of this type.
actual size
A splendid example of the artist’s draughtsmanship, the present sheet is a preparatory study, of identical size and in reverse, for one of Gaetano Gandolfi’s etchings, depicting The Head of a Woman in Profile to the Right3. The small etching (fig.1), one of Gaetano’s rare forays into the medium, has been dated to the late 1770’s or 1780’s. The etching also appears along with six other prints by Gandolfi, two of them signed, in a single large sheet; examples are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and in a private collection4. Donatella Biagi Maino has noted of the present sheet that, ‘This drawing, both for its preparatory character but especially for the superb quality of draughtsmanship and invention…should be considered an important addition to the catalogue of drawings by Gandolfi.’5 In a recent catalogue of the Gandolfi’s work as printmakers, another recent scholar has aptly described the present sheet as ‘an outstanding pen and ink drawing’6 by Gaetano. A nearly identical head of a young woman reappears on a drawing by Gaetano Gandolfi of eight different studies of heads (fig.2), which was on the art market in London in 1973 and again recently in Germany7. Similar female heads may also be found throughout the artist’s painted oeuvre, such as a Portrait of a Young Woman in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna8 and a painting of the Head of a Young Girl, signed and dated ‘G. Gandolfi 1763’, in a Bolognese private collection9. It has been suggested that some of these heads may be portraits of the artist’s young wife Giovanna Spisani, whom he married in 1763, and who posed for a number of paintings by her husband. A pendant drawing by Gaetano Gandolfi of a bearded man facing right10, of identical dimensions to the present sheet and exhibited alongside it in Bologna in 1996, is, however, unrelated to any known print. A fine impression of the etching (fig.1) for which this drawing is a preparatory study is sold with the present sheet.
1.
2.
43 GIOVANNI DAVID Cabella Ligure 1749-1790 Genoa A Nightmare Pen and grey ink, with grey and brown wash, heightened with white and yellow, over an underdrawing in black chalk. The composition set within a fictive mount, drawn with a blue wash border and black framing lines. 237 x 306 mm. (9 3/ 8 x 12 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, Milan, Sotheby’s, 8 May 2001, lot 435; Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., London; Private collection. LITERATURE: Adriano Cera, ed., Disegni, acquarelli, tempere di artisti italiani dal 1770 ca. al 1830 ca., Bologna, 2002, Vol.I, unpaginated, David no.7; Mary Newcome Schleier and Giovanni Grasso, Giovanni David: Pittore e incisore della famiglia Durazzo, Turin, 2003, p.52, no.D20; Anne Lafont, ‘Genova alle origini del romanticismo francese: Girodet e Gros in Italia’, in Piero Boccardo, Clario Di Fabio and Philippe Sénéchal, ed., Genova e l’Europa: Opere, artisti, committenti, collezionisti, Cinisello Balsamo, 2003, p.251, fig.11; Clifford S. Ackley, ‘The Intuitive Eye: Drawings and Paintings from the Collection of Horace Wood Brock’, in Horace Wood Brock, Martin P. Levy and Clifford S. Ackley, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 2009, p.89 and p.158, no.132, illustrated p.131. EXHIBITED: Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.132. Only a handful of paintings, frescoes and drawings survive from the oeuvre of Giovanni David, a Genoese artist described by his biographer Federico Alizeri as ‘rare alle opere, bizzarro allo stile, oscuro alla vita e pressochè misterioso’1. David studied in Rome in the early 1770’s and spent some time in Naples and in Venice before returning to Genoa at the end of the decade. He entered the service of the Genoese count Giacomo Durazzo, a diplomat and collector who had earlier sponsored his training and who was to be his chief patron throughout his career. He executed a number of paintings for Genoese churches, while among his most important secular public commissions were two lunette paintings for the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. While David worked mainly in Genoa, he also travelled to France, Holland and England2. While the present sheet cannot be related to any known work by David, as Mary Newcome has noted, ‘the drawing is nevertheless characteristic of the technical skill and the powers of imagination of the artist, who was capable of creating visions rich in colourful characters as well as detailed still lifes.’3 The scene depicted is the entrance to Hades, the underworld. A bare-breasted woman lights a torch from a brazier held by Death, accompanied by his scythe, while above her hovers a winged demon holding thunderbolts and snakes in his hands. At the upper left sits King Minos, judge of the dead, attended by the three-headed dog Cerberus. At the right are the three Fates. Standing at the right is Clotho, the youngest of the Fates, who holds the staff with the thread of human life that she has spun, while her sister Lachesis reclines on the ground holding the thread, which is being cut with shears by Atropos, the eldest Fate. In mood and macabre subject, this drawing may be likened to a highly finished drawing by David – an allegorical representation of the imagined death of the artist himself during the plague in Venice in 1780 – in the Philadelphia Museum of Art4. The Philadelphia drawing also includes a similar skeletal figure of Death, as well as the three Fates. The Fates are also prominently depicted in a stylistically comparable drawing of An Allegory of the Wool Guild, with Minerva and the Fates and the Durazzo Coat of Arms of c.1777, in a New York private collection5. Highy finished drawings such as these are a testament to the creative powers of Giovanni David; an artist who, as has been aptly noted, ‘succeeded in formulating some of the most complex, imaginative scenes to be found in Genoese art in the late eighteenth century.’6
44 PIETRO ANTONIO NOVELLI Venice 1729-1804 Venice Two Telamons Pen and black ink and black and grey wash, heightened with white on paper washed ochre. Inscribed David. in black ink at the lower left. 273 x 195 mm. (10 3/4 x 7 5/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Anonymous sale, Florence, Casa d’Aste Pitti, 14 May 1987, lot 1108 (as attributed to Novelli); P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1995: Private collection. The outlines of Pietro Antonio Novelli’s career are known through his posthumously published memoirs, which appeared thirty years after his death. Trained in the studio of Giambattista Pittoni, his earliest paintings – a Saint Joseph in the Venetian church of Santa Fosca and a Presentation in the Temple in the church of San Francesco in Rovigo, both painted in 1759 – also show the influence of Jacopo Amigoni. Among other early documented works are a set of illustrations for an edition of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, published in 1760. In 1768 Novelli was accepted as a member of the Accademia in Venice, for whom he painted an Allegory of the Arts. He produced decorative frescoes in several Venetian palaces, including that of the Corniani-Tivan, Mangilli, Mocenigo and Sangiatoffetti families, and also painted altarpieces and decorative frescoes throughout Northern Italy. By 1779 he had settled in Rome, where he worked for most of the next twenty years, coming under the influence of Neoclassicism and the work of such artists as Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs. During this period Novelli completed a ceiling painting of Cupid and Psyche for the Villa Borghese and received commissions for the decoration of a number of Roman palaces. The last years of his career were spent back in Venice. Novelli is perhaps best known today for his drawings, which are often fanciful in nature and vibrant in colouring. He was an inventive and versatile draughtsman; as one contemporary source noted, ‘The drawings and painted works by Novelli showed not just a profound knowledge, but also a supreme degree of fantasy, and I myself saw him change in ten and more ways the same subject.’1 His many and varied drawings – in pen and ink, watercolour and red chalk – included studies for paintings and altarpieces, as well as a significant number of designs for book illustrations, prints and frontispieces. This drawing belongs with a small but distinctive group of similar figure studies, executed in black and grey ink on prepared paper, which are either derived from, or inspired by, sculptural models. These drawings have borne different attributions in the past, but are now generally given to Pietro Antonio Novelli. Five drawings from this homogenous group are today in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris2, and three each are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York3 and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans4, while others are in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford5, the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, MA6, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York7, and elsewhere. A closely related pair of drawings of telamons appeared at auction in Monaco in 19848, while a stylistic comparison may also be made with a drawing of Neptune in a private collection in Brussels9. The inscription ‘David’ at the lower left of this sheet appears to be in the same black ink as that used in the drawing itself. This suggests the intriguing possibility that this drawing, and by extension others of this group, might be the work of Novelli’s younger contemporary, the Genoese artist Giovanni David (17431790). Certainly, the draughtsmanship of this group is somewhat looser and more painterly than in other drawings by Novelli, and as such it has been proposed that the drawings may date to an early phase in his career. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect a Genoese flavour in these studies that suggests that they may be the work of a different artist altogether. The fact that the inscription on the present sheet seems to resemble a signature found on an autograph drawing of a standing woman by Giovanni David in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, dated 177810, further argues that the attribution of this group of drawings may need to be studied further.
45 GIOVANNI DOMENICO TIEPOLO Venice 1727–1804 Venice Saint Anthony of Padua with the Christ Child in Glory with Angels Pen and brown and grey ink and grey and black wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk. Signed Dom.o Tiepolo f. in brown ink at the lower left. Numbered 101 in brown ink at the upper left. 244 x 181 mm. (9 5/ 8 x 7 1/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Part of album of drawings by Domenico Tiepolo with provenance as follows1: Possibly Francesco Guardi, Venice; Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, Middlesex; The Earl of Beauchamp; His sale, London, Christie’s, 15 June 1965, lot 21; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 3 July 1996, lot 95; Flavia Ormond, London, in 1997; Private collection. LITERATURE: Wolfgang Schulz, ‘Tiepolo-Probleme: Ein Antonius-Album von Giandomenico Tiepolo’, in Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 1978, p.72. EXHIBITED: Stanford University, Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Classic Taste: Drawings and Decorative Arts from the Collection of Horace Brock, March-May, 2000; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.96. For much of the last twenty years of his career, Domenico Tiepolo seems to have painted only occasionally, and instead worked primarily as a draughtsman, producing a large number of pen and wash drawings that may collectively be regarded as perhaps his finest artistic legacy. These drawings were, for the most part, executed as a series of several dozen or more themed compositions – depicting both religious and secular subjects – which may be counted among the most charming examples of Settecento Venetian draughtsmanship. The present sheet is among the finest examples from a large series of drawings of Saint Anthony and the Christ Child by Domenico Tiepolo, in all likelihood executed following his return to Venice from Spain in 1770. As James Byam Shaw has written, ‘Perhaps the most charming of Domenico’s religious series is that of St Anthony of Padua holding the infant Christ, sometimes standing at the steps of an altar, but more often floating in clouds, attended by angels or cherubs or winged cherubs’ heads. The scale of the figures varies in these drawings, and the series is less consistent than some of the others, but many of them have the early serial numbers at the top on the left, as high as 102...’2 It is thought that this series of drawings by Domenico may have been inspired by his father Giambattista Tiepolo’s late altarpiece of Saint Anthony of Padua with the Christ Child, painted in 1769 for the church of the convent of San Pascual Baylon at Aranjuez and today in the Prado3. The altarpiece was part of a cycle of seven oval paintings commissioned from the elder Tiepolo at the very end of his career, and Domenico is likely to have assisted his father with the commission. This was one of twenty drawings of Saint Anthony and the Christ Child which were once part of an album of over 160 drawings by Domenico Tiepolo belonging to Horace Walpole (1717-1797). The inside back cover of the album was inscribed with a price guide in an 18th century Italian hand, possibly that of Domenico’s uncle, the artist Francesco Guardi (1712-1793). Since a very similar inscription appears on another album of drawings by Domenico, in the Museo Correr in Venice, it has been suggested that both albums may have been owned by Guardi, who was offering the drawings for sale. The contents of the album, later owned by the Earl of Beauchamp, were dispersed at auction in 1965. Other drawings of Saint Anthony and the Christ Child by Domenico Tiepolo are today in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Besançon, the Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, the Albertina in Vienna, the Martin von Wagner-Museum in Würzburg, and elsewhere.
46 GIOVANNI DOMENICO TIEPOLO Venice 1727–1804 Venice Two Monkeys on a Rock Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over traces of an underdrawing in black chalk. Signed Dom.o Tiepolo f. in brown ink at the lower right. 284 x 201 mm. (11 1/ 8 x 7 7/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: Trinity Fine Art, London and Milan; Flavia Ormond, London; Private collection. LITERATURE: Clifford S. Ackley, ‘Master drawings from the collection of Horace Wood Brock’, The Magazine Antiques, February 2009, p.55, illustrated p.55, fig.7. EXHIBITED: Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection, 2009, no.108. This drawing is one of a group of studies of various animals and birds that have been dated to the latter part of Domenico Tiepolo’s career, after his return from Spain in 1770, and perhaps as late as the 1790’s. James Byam Shaw has associated these drawings with the fresco decoration of the Tiepolo family villa at Zianigo, near Padua; most of the frescoes in the rooms of this small country house were detached in 1907 and are now in the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice. Remnants of several overdoor frescoes, depicting various animals in landscape settings, remain in situ in the villa, however, and several of Domenico’s animal drawings correspond exactly to these1. Most of Domenico’s drawings of animals, including the present sheet, incorporate a ledge or dado at the bottom, and Byam Shaw suggested that they may have been intended for a frieze running around the upper walls of one or more of the rooms in the Villa Zianigo. Byam Shaw further noted that a number of studies of animals by Domenico seem to have been based on prints by other artists, notably Johann Elias Ridinger and Stefano della Bella, as well as paintings and frescoes by his father, Giambattista Tiepolo. As he has perceptively written, ‘It is perhaps a little disappointing, or at least disconcerting to our present ideas of artistic proprieties, to find that so few of the animals were drawn from life...But experience of Domenico’s methods does not encourage illusions in this respect; and generally it was not his way to trouble himself with a living model if a pictorial one, his own or someone else’s, was at hand.’2 The sitting monkey in this drawing, who seems to be catching a flea, appears in a number of other works by Domenico Tiepolo. He appears, for example, at the extreme left of a drawing of eight monkeys in a landscape, in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York3, as well as in a genre drawing of Dancing Bears and Monkeys on a Country Road of c.1791, at one time in the Beurdeley and Lehman collections4, and in a related drawing of a similar subject formerly in the collection of Alfred Strolin in Paris5. A similar (though not identical) monkey is found, in reverse, in a drawing of A Procession with a Camel and Monkeys, which, like the ex-Beurdeley and Lehman sheet, was part of the group of genre drawings known as the Scenes of Contemporary Life, datable to c.17916. Byam Shaw has pointed out that the same monkey also appears, in reverse, in Giambattista Tiepolo’s etching of A Young Shepherdess and Old Man with a Monkey, one of the series of prints by the elder Tiepolo known as the scherzi di fantasia7.
47 GIUSEPPE BERNARDINO BISON Palmanova 1762-1844 Milan Two Heads of Young Women Pen and brown ink and brown wash. A small sketch of the head of a young woman in pen on the verso. Signed Bison in brown ink at the lower left, and initialled B in pencil on the verso. 144 x 174 mm. (5 5/ 8 x 6 7/ 8 in.) Watermark: Horn of plenty? Giuseppe Bernardino Bison received his artistic training in Venice, and spent the early part of his career working as a fresco painter in villas and palaces around the Veneto, including the Palazzo Manzoni in Padua, the Villa Tironi at Lancenigo, the Villa Spineda at Breda di Piave and the Casino Soderini in Treviso. Around 1800 he settled in Trieste, where among his more important works were the decoration of the Palazzo Carciotti, painted around 1805, and the Palazzo della Vecchia Borsa, completed three years later. In 1831 Bison moved to Milan, where he worked for the remainder of his career. There he was particularly active as a scenographer, producing stage designs for the Teatro alla Scala and other theatres. Bison painted a large number of views of Venice, as well as small landscapes in both oil and tempera, intended for sale to collectors. Although his career lasted well into the 19th century, his style invariably retains something of the flavour of the previous century; indeed, Bison’s oeuvre has been aptly described by one recent scholar as ‘a last late flowering of the Venetian Settecento’1. Bison was an accomplished and prolific draughtsman, with an oeuvre of charming genre studies and landscapes in pen and ink wash or gouache. His earliest drawings show the Venetian influence of Giambattista Tiepolo and Francesco Guardi, while his later works tend towards Neoclassicism. His preferred medium was pen and ink, and his drawings encompass a wide and varied range of subjects, from religious narratives to genre scenes, landscape capricci, and stage and ornament designs. Few of Bison’s drawings, however, were intended as preparatory studies for paintings, and he produced a large number of drawings as independent works of art. That his drawings were admired in his lifetime can be seen in an early account of his work, published a year after the artist’s death, in which it was noted that Bison ‘was sketching, either with the pen or with chalk, various and whimsical subjects.’2 Significant groups of drawings by Bison are today in the collections of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the Musei Civici in Trieste and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. The present sheet is a fine and typical example of Bison’s lively draughtsmanship. Analogous studies of female heads appear throughout the artist’s oeuvre; among stylistically comparable pen and wash drawings is a study of The Holy Family which appeared at auction in London in 19753 and a very similar drawing of the heads of three women, sold at auction in Rome in 19894.
verso (detail)
48 PIETRO FANCELLI Bologna 1764-1850 Bologna A Vision of the Madonna and Child with Saint Anthony Abbot and Another Monk Appearing to an Officer Oil paint with brown wash, on greenish-blue paper. 370 x 590 mm. (14 1/ 2 x 23 1/4 in.) [sheet] PROVENANCE: Possibly the Société Historique et Littéraire Polonaise, Paris1; Possibly their sale, London, Christie’s, 4 July 1972; Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 19 April 1994, lot 120; P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1995; Private collection. ‘One of the most enchanting artists of the Bolognese Barochetto’2, Pietro Fancelli received his early training in the Venetian studio of his father, the decorative painter Petronio Fancelli, before returning to his native Bologna in 1784 and enrolling in the Accademia Clementina. He maintained a close relationship with the Accademia throughout his career, becoming a member in 1791 and continuing to teach drawing there after its reorganization as the Accademia Nazionale di Belli Arti in 1804. Fancelli established a reputation as a specialist in theatrical design and scenography, and was active as a portrait and decorative fresco painter. He produced a number of paintings for local churches, notably a Stigmatization of Saint Francis for San Francesco in Faenza, painted in 1790, a Saint Thomas of Villanova Distributing Alms in the church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna, completed in 1827, and a Saint Anne and the Virgin for Santa Maria Maggiore in Bologna, painted in 1829. Throughout his career, Fancelli often worked in tandem with the landscape painter Vincenzo Martinelli, producing grand decorative cycles in numerous palaces and villas in and around Bologna. Among the palaces in Bologna where Fancelli worked were the Palazzo Tanari, the Palazzo Hercolani, the Palazzo Aldini Sanguinetti and the Palazzo Arcivescovile, while his work was also to be found outside the city, at the Villa Contri, the Villa Pallavicini Malpighi, the Villa Sorra, and elsewhere. Among his other public commissions were the design and painted decoration of several tomb monuments for the Certosa of Bologna, for the Magnani, Borghi, Malvezzi and Bargellini families, as well as the decoration of the tomb of his friend and artistic collaborator Martinelli, who died in 1807. Fancelli also took part in the decoration of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, following its renovation in 1820. A manuscript autobiography, today in the Biblioteca Comunale in Bologna and as yet unpublished, lists a total of 245 works by the artist, executed between 1785 and 1837. Despite the fact that Fancelli owed much of his success to his skill and inventiveness as a draughtsman, only a fairly small corpus of drawings by him survives, in which the combination of his Venetian training and Bolognese heritage can be seen. Although this unfinished oil sketch on paper remains unrelated to any known work by the artist, its lunette shape is similar to that of another drawing by Fancelli; a study of La Beneficenca in the Schloss Fachsenfeld collection at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart3. The Stuttgart drawing served as a design for a sephulcral monument, one of several that Fancelli produced, in the early years of the 19th century, for the newly built cemetery of the Certosa, just outside Bologna. Although somewhat unusual in composition, the present sheet may have also been intended for a similar purpose. A terminus ante quem for this large sheet is provided by the fact that it is drawn on the reverse of the cover of the Pinacoteca della Pontificia Accademia di Belli Arti in Bologna, published by Francesco Rosaspina in 1830.
49 CARLO BOSSOLI Davesco 1815-1884 Turin The Neptune Fountain and the Paseo del Prado, Madrid Watercolour and gouache. Signed C. Bossoli in pencil at the lower left. 256 x 458 mm. (10 1/ 8 x 18 in.) PROVENANCE: The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, St. Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo; Given by her to a British diplomat c.1860; Thence by descent until 1990; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 28 November 1990, lot 8; Guillermo de Osma Galería, Madrid, in 1997; Private collection, Madrid. EXHIBITED: Madrid, Guillermo de Osma Galería, La Espanã Romántica 1830-1860, 1997, no.39. Perhaps the foremost topographical artist in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, Carlo Bossoli was born in Switzerland and grew up in Odessa, in the southern Ukraine. A young artist of considerable promise, he attracted the patronage of the Countess Vorontsov, wife of the governor of the province, and by the age of eighteen was selling his drawings of urban and landscape views. In the early 1840’s Bossoli travelled extensively around the Crimea, producing a large number of drawings, watercolours and gouaches of views of the main sites and cities of the region. In 1843 the artist and his family returned to Europe, eventually settling in Italy. With the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, Bossoli travelled to London, where his knowledge of the Crimea stood him in very good stead. The immense interest on the part of the British public for views of Sebastopol, Balaklava, Inkermann and the other battlegrounds mentioned in news reports led Bossoli to produce a series of fifty-two Crimean views; these were reproduced in a lavish volume entitled The Beautiful Scenery and Chief Places of Interest Throughout the Crimea from Paintings by Carlo Bossoli, published in London in 1856. Among the many collectors of Bossoli’s watercolours of Crimean views were Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. Bossoli exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1855 and 1859, and in 1857 undertook his longest journey thus far, travelling through France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Switzerland. Each of his travels resulted in drawings and watercolours of the cities and sites that he visited. Between 1859 and 1861 he produced a series of over a hundred gouaches illustrating the contemporaneous military campaign for the independence of Italy, commissioned by Prince Eugenio di Savoia-Carignano. Bossoli died of a heart attack in Turin in 1884. Carlo Bossoli made a long trip to Spain and Morocco in 1851, and this splendid watercolour is likely to date from this year or shortly thereafter. Another view of Madrid, depicting the Plaza Mayor and almost certainly of the same date, shares the same Russian provenance as the present sheet1. Apart from Madrid, Bossoli is also known to have visited a number of other cities in Spain in 1851, and in later years produced spirited watercolour and gouache drawings of Seville2 and Cadiz3, as well as views of the Escorial4, Burgos, Aranjuez and Barcelona5. Some of these views may have been commissioned by the Spanish-born Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoléon III, who is listed in Bossoli’s account book as the purchasor of eleven ‘vedute della Spagna’ in 1858. This view of Madrid is one of four highly finished drawings in gouache and watercolour by Bossoli that were once part of the collection of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (1798-1860), born Princess Charlotte of Prussia and the wife of Tsar Nicholas I. The other three watercolours were views of the Royal Palace in Berlin, the Plaza Mayor in Madrid and the colonnade of the summer palace at Sanssouci, near Berlin6. The set of four watercolours by Bossoli were presented as gifts to a British diplomat shortly before or after the Dowager Empress’s death in 1860. They remained in the possession of the diplomat’s family for the next 130 years before being dispersed at auction in 1990.
50 GIACINTO GIGANTE Naples 1806-1876 Naples Casarlano, near Sorrento Watercolour, heightened with touches of gouache, on buff paper. Signed and dated Gia Gigante 1850 in brown ink at the lower left. 276 x 379 mm. (10 7/ 8 x 14 7/ 8 in.) The son of a minor landscape painter, Giacinto Gigante worked as an engraver early in his career. He completed his artistic training in the Neapolitan studio of the Dutch painter Antoon Sminck Pitloo, who encouraged his students to paint all’aperto, or out of doors. Gigante exhibited for the first time in 1826, showing four watercolours at the annual exhibition at the Museo Borbonico. He contributed illustrations for the books Viaggio pittorico nel regno delle due Sicilie, published between 1829 and 1832, and the Esquisses pittoresques et descriptives de la ville et environs de Naples, published in 1832. Gigante’s patrons included a number of Russian aristocrats living in Naples, and in 1846 he accompanied the Czarina of Russia on a tour of Sicily, making landscape drawings for an album of views of the island. Established as a successful landscape painter and draughtsman, with a particular penchant for views of Naples and the surrounding region, Gigante was the acknowledged leader of a group of Neapolitan landscape artists later known as the Scuola di Posillipo. Writing in 1853, one contemporary English critic noted of Gigante that, ‘There is no portion of the Neapolitan scenery, to which he has not been a frequent, patient, enthusiastic visitant…In this tempered region, where fertility and wildness meet,…where at every turn some feature, soft or savage, forms a seductive or striking frame to the distant landscape, Sig. Gigante finds the subjects of those studies, which, for freedom of handling, fidelity of colour, transparency, perspective, and effect, have no parallel on his own more ambitious canvass, or on the canvass of any living painter of his country.’1 In 1850 Gigante received his first Bourbon commission, for a set of views of Gaeta intended as an official present to the Archduchess Maria Theresa in Vienna. His association with the Neapolitan court continued for several years, with the artist accompanying the Royal family on visits to their palaces at Gaeta, Caserta and Ischia. Among other important patrons was the King of Italy, Vittorio Emmanuele II, for whom he painted the interior of the Duomo in Naples, completed in 1863 and shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867. Significant groups of drawings and watercolours by Giacinto Gigante are today in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte and the Museo Nazionale di San Martino, both in Naples. This watercolour depicts a view near the forested mountain village of Casarlano, above the town of Sorrento, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Gigante spent much of 1848 and 1849 living and working in Sorrento, and the view from Casarlano and the woods surrounding it was one that he seems to have been particularly fond of, as it appears in a number of drawings and watercolours of this period. A larger variant of this composition, also dated 1850 but with different staffage, was on the art market in 2001 and is today in a private Neapolitan collection2. Another, smaller gouache of the same view by Gigante, again dated 1850, was in the Statella collection in Naples in 19303. A watercolour showing a different view of the trees at Casarlano is in the Astarita collection at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples4. The present sheet may also be compared stylistically with a View of Sant’Agata, Sorrento, drawn in July 1850, in the collection of the Galleria dell’Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples5, as well as a View of Capri from Massalubrense, of the same date, in a Neapolitan private collection6.
51 GIOVANNI (NINO) COSTA Rome 1826-1903 Marina di Pisa Study of a Tree, with a Young Boy Watercolour, over traces of an underdrawing in pencil. 399 x 275 mm. (15 3/4 x 10 7/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: By descent in the family of the artist. Trained as an artist, Giovanni (known as ‘Nino’) Costa was also a committed patriot. He served with the Roman Legion against the Austrians in Northern Italy in 1848, and the following year joined the army of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the unsuccessful defence of Rome against the French. For much of the next decade, Costa lived mostly in small towns and villages in the Roman Campagna, and devoted himself to landscape painting. While he was a particular influence on the Macchiaioli painters in Florence in the 1850’s and 1860’s, his influence on English artists working in Italy was, if anything, even more profound. It was in the Campagna in the early 1850’s that Costa met the English painters Charles Coleman, George Heming Mason and Frederic Leighton, with whom he was to become especially close. He also befriended other English artists, including George Howard, Walter Crane, William Blake Richmond and Edward Burne-Jones. Costa’s studio on the Via Margutta in Rome became a meeting place for English painters visiting the city, and he was largely responsible for promoting the work of the Pre-Raphaelite painters in Italy. His paintings were acquired by English artists and collectors, and he made several trips to London, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery and the New Gallery. Costa became the head of an informal group of English landscape painters working in Italy – including Richmond, Howard and Matthew Ridley Corbet – who called themselves ‘The Etruscans’, and who found inspiration in sketching trips into the Campagna. In 1882 a large exhibition of Costa’s paintings was held at the Fine Art Society in London, and by the time of his death he was, after Canova, arguably the most famous modern Italian artist known in England. Many of Costa’s earliest known drawings are studies of trees and plants, and he seems to have drawn from nature from a young age. As he once described his approach to landscape painting to the painter Giovanni Fattori, whose work was profoundly influenced by that of Costa: ‘First do a bozzetto di impressione from nature as rapidly as possible; then do studies of details from nature. Finally, sketch out the picture [abbozzare il quadro], remaining attached to the conception of the bozzetto, never taking your eyes off that eternal bozzetto.’1 A related watercolour of a tree by Nino Costa (fig.1), of comparable dimensions and sharing the same provenance as the present sheet, was recently acquired by the Delaware Art Museum2. A similar pencil drawing of a tree trunk, an early work datable before 1860, was in a private collection in 19723.
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52 MOSÉ BIANCHI Monza 1840-1904 Monza Along the Promenade, Naples (Ricordo di Napoli) Pencil and gouache on thick buff paper, with framing lines in pencil. Signed with initials MB in pencil at the lower right. 350 x 185 mm. (13 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.) [image] 416 x 288 mm. (16 3/ 8 x 11 3/ 8 in.) [sheet] PROVENANCE: Acquired from the artist by Juan and Felix Bernasconi, Milan1; By descent in the Bernasconi family to Anna Maria Elvira Celia Mendez [?] de Bernasconi (with her signature in ink on the verso); The Bernasconi sale, London, Christie’s, 27 March 1987, part of lot 252; Borghi & Co., New York, in 1987; Private collection. LITERATURE: Paolo Biscottini, Mosè Bianchi: Catalogo ragionato, Milan 1996, p.310, no.445 and under no.444. Mosé Bianchi received his artistic training at the Accademia di Brera in Milan and, even in his earliest works, which were academic history subjects and altarpieces, the lightness of touch and fluidity of handling for which he would become known is readily evident. In 1866 he went to Venice, where he was strongly affected by the work of Giambattista Tiepolo. The following year he was in Paris, where he met the art dealer Adolphe Goupil, who did much to spread the artist’s reputation outside Italy. In 1877 Bianchi completed his first significant decorative project, the Tiepolesque fresco decoration of the Villa Giovanelli at Lonigo, near Vicenza. The Giovanelli were well known as collectors and connoisseurs, and their employment of Bianchi enhanced the artist’s reputation and led to further fresco commissions. Bianchi continued to develop his distinctive, painterly style in his views of Venice of the 1880’s and of Milan in the following decade. His oeuvre also includes many scenes of rural life, notably around Gignese on Lake Maggiore, and several superb portraits. Datable to 1886, this is a study for a small painting by Mosè Bianchi (fig.1), formerly in a private collection in Milan2. In both the painting and the present drawing, the artist seems to delight in the contrast between the group of elegant women walking on the quayside at the right and the peasant folk in the left foreground. The drawing differs from the finished painting mainly in the absence, in the final work, of the long boat seen in the middle distance in the present sheet. Stylistically and thematically, both drawing and painting may be related to a number of works that Bianchi produced in the 1880’s of figures on the promenade in Chioggia; a fishing town at the southern end of the Venetian lagoon.
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53 FRANCESCO PAOLO MICHETTI Tocco di Casauria 1851-1929 Francavilla al Mare The Head of a Young Woman in Profile (Portrait of Annunziata Cirmignani) Charcoal and black chalk, with stumping, on buff paper, with framing lines in black chalk. Signed FP Michetti in black chalk at the lower left. Numbered 87 in black chalk at the lower right. 491 x 385 mm. (19 3/ 8 x 15 1/ 8 in.) [sheet] A student at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples, Francesco Paolo Michetti enjoyed his earliest success in Paris, where he participated in the Salons of 1872 and 1875. It was not until 1877, however, when his large canvas of The Procession of the Corpus Domini at Chieti was exhibited in Naples to popular acclaim, that he secured his reputation in Italy. Michetti developed a distinctive style of painting, with the use of bold colours and vibrant effects achieved with a brilliant technique. A common thread in his work was his interest in rural themes, and particularly the beliefs and traditions of his native Abruzzo region. Michetti exhibited frequently throughout Italy, often showing large groups of studies in pastel and tempera. At the third Biennale in Venice, held in 1899, he was honoured with a retrospective exhibition of some two hundred works covering the whole of his career. His last major paintings, two large canvases entitled The Cripples and The Snakes which continued his interest in local customs, were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. After 1900, however, Michetti largely abandoned painting in favour of photography, becoming one of the first artistic practitioners of the new technique in Italy. In fact, by the early 1880’s he had begun to base his paintings and drawings on his own photographs, preferring these to using posed models in his studio. During the last thirty years of his life, Michetti continued to experiment with photography, while also producing a series of almost monochromatic landscape drawings and sketches in oil, gouache and pastel. Francesco Michetti’s superb drawings are characterized by the confidence and virtuosity with which he handled the chalk or pastel medium, which he was able to exploit for its strong colour and luminous effects. His use of pastel in particular was to be a distinct influence on a number of younger artists in Naples, notably Giuseppe Casciaro (1863-1941). This splendid large drawing is a portrait of Michetti’s future wife, Annunziata Cirmignani. The artist met Annunziata, then aged thirteen, when he left Chieti and settled in Francavilla al Mare in 1878, and the two were married ten years later. Annunziata appears in many of Michetti’s pastel and chalk portraits from 1878 onwards1. A closely related pastel and gouache version of this composition, whose current whereabouts are unknown, is illustrated in an early monograph on the artist’s work2. A stereoscopic photograph (fig.1) taken by Michetti of Annunziata wearing the same distinctive hoop earrings and seen in profile to the left, datable to c.1881-1883, is in the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome3. The same earrings also appear in several pastel portraits of Annunziata by Michetti4.
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54 GIUSEPPE CASCIARO Ortelle 1863-1941 Naples The Park of Capodimonte in Naples Pastel on brown paper. Signed and inscribed GCasciaro Napoli in pencil at the lower right. Stamped G. CASCIARO / NAPOLI in a circle in blue ink (not in Lugt) and numbered 19 in pencil on the verso. 242 x 398 mm. (9 1/ 2 x 15 5/ 8 in.) A pupil of Filippo Palizzi, Gioacchino Toma, Stanislao Lista and Domenico Morelli at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples, where he won numerous prizes, Giuseppe Casciaro enjoyed a long and successful career of some sixty years. He developed a particular proficiency for landscape drawings in pastel, although he also produced a handful of oil paintings. He may have first been inspired to take up the medium of pastel in 1885, when a series of pastel drawings by the artist Francesco Paolo Michetti was shown in Naples. Two years later, in 1887, Casciaro exhibited a series of eleven pastel landscapes of his own, and he remained devoted to the medium throughout his career. He settled on the hillside quarter of Naples known as the Vomero, sharing a studio with the painter Attilio Pratella, and for much of his life his preferred subject matter were views in and around Naples and the islands of Capri and Ischia. Between 1892 and 1896 Casciaro travelled regularly to Paris, where he had a one-man exhibition and received commissions from the dealer Adolphe Goupil. Appointed a professor at the Accademia in Naples in 1902, by 1906 he was also engaged as a tutor in pastel drawing to the Queen of Italy, Elena di Savoia. Casciaro exhibited frequently in Naples and at the Biennale in Venice, and won a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. His work was exhibited throughout Europe; in Munich, Barcelona, Prague, Athens and St. Petersburg, as well as in San Francisco, Tokyo and in South America. Casciaro was among the finest practitioners of the art of the pastel landscape in Italy in the late 19th century, and his pastels were greatly admired by collectors and connoisseurs. The author of an early monograph on the artist noted that his pastels achieved ‘an extraordinarily perceptive refinement and a solidity of touch’1, and likened his accomplishments in the medium to that of such predecessors and contemporaries as Michetti, Giuseppe de Nittis, Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet. The Neapolitan poet Salvatore Di Giacomo, a close friend of the artist, preferred to describe the work of the artist in lyrical terms: ‘A pastel by Casciaro resembles both Bach and Mozart; it is sometimes both tragic and profound, a moving Beethoven-like passage. This elegance is delightful: this spirit, this taste are rare: this pleasant and assured strength, it does not oppress you but it pulls you: and the voice of this lovely artist has all the accents: it has the ardour and the sigh, the impetus and the tenderness, a cry and a murmur.’2 The Royal Park of Capodimonte, situated on a hill above Naples, is dominated by the Palace of Capodimonte, built in 1738 as the summer residence of the Kings of the Two Sicilies. The surrounding park belonged to the Bourbon Kings and was used for hunting, fishing and riding. As a 19th century guidebook noted, ‘Capo di Monte is a delightful hill, commanding a view of a large part of Naples...Round the palace is the park, or royal chase called Bosco di Capo di Monte. It is surrounded with walls, and has an extent of nearly three miles. A little beyond the entrance, five long and wide walks are seen, which advance into the interior of the forest, where they are crossed by other alleys from the opposite side...Statues, fountains, and cottages may be observed along each walk. At the end of the park there is a beautiful cabinet with a parterre, and a fish pound. This is intended to serve as a shelter in case of rain during the chase, which is rendered extremely pleasant by the quantity of hares, rabbits and game of every kind.’3
55 GIOVANNI BOLDINI Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris Portrait of a Man in Profile Black and grey ink and black and grey wash, with touches of red watercolour, over an underdrawing in pencil. Signed or dedicated à mon ami Michel / Boldini in brown ink at the lower right. 178 x 125 mm. (7 x 4 7/ 8 in.) From the earliest years of his career in Florence, Giovanni Boldini displayed a remarkable talent as a portrait painter. He settled in Paris in 1871, and by 1885 had begun to paint society portraits, soon developing a reputation for his dazzling, elegant depictions of the fashionable women of the city, characterized by a virtuoso technique. Within a few years Boldini had risen to a position of prominence in Parisian art circles, counting among his friends other society painters such as Paul-César Helleu, John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler, as well as Edgar Degas, who is said to have once told the artist, “Vous êtes un monstre de talent!”. By the turn of the century Boldini had become the most soughtafter portrait painter in Paris, his reputation rivalling that of Sargent in London. His fame reached as far as America, from where he received several portrait commissions, stimulated by an exhibition of his work in New York in 1897. The present sheet is closely related to an oil sketch on panel of Connoisseurs in an Artist’s Studio (fig.1), which was among the contents of Boldini’s studio at the time of his death and is today in a private collection1. The unfinished painting depicts the artist’s friend, the painter Helleu, standing with his back to the viewer and looking at a painting. Another man may be seen just in front of him, also standing; this may be the American painter Sargent, a close friend of Helleu who was also painted by Boldini2. This lively watercolour sketch is clearly related to the third figure in the painting, the older man at the left, whose identity remains a mystery. That he was almost certainly a collector is suggested by Boldini’s inscription ‘fameux connaisseur’ on a pencil portrait of the same man (fig.2), dated 1883, in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York3. This as yet unidentified gentleman also appears in another painting of a studio interior by Boldini4, as well as in two etchings; one depicting him walking in the street and the other of him in an artist’s studio, in both instances wearing a top hat. Impressions of both etchings, one of which is known in two states, are in the Museo Boldini in Ferrara5.
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actual size
56 GIOVANNI BOLDINI Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris Landscape with Trees in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris Watercolour, with some traces of an underdrawing in pencil. Laid down. Signed or inscribed Boldini in brown ink at the lower right. 535 x 367 mm. (21 x 14 1/ 2 in.) Although Giovanni Boldini’s reputation as a fashionable portrait painter was well established by the 1880’s, an abiding interest in landscape subjects is evident in his work from the start of his career. Among his earliest paintings were a series of landscape frescoes for the Villa ‘La Falconiera’, near Pistoia, commissioned by the Englishman Sir Walter Falconer and completed in 1870, shortly before the artist moved to Paris. Alongside the interior scenes and portraits for which he was to become best known, Boldini painted a number of landscapes of the countryside around Paris. Indeed, by 1878 one American art critic could write that ‘Boldini’s best work is his landscapes…and in these landscapes the best feature is the delightful and masterly rendering of sunshine and daylight.’1 Large-scale landscapes in watercolour by Boldini are a small but choice feature of the artist’s extensive oeuvre as a draughtsman. This and the following watercolour are likely to depict trees in the Bois de Boulogne, a large park on the western edge of Paris, which Boldini used as the setting for one of his finest paintings; the magnificent full-length double portrait A Walk in the Bois de Boulogne (fig.1), painted in 1909 and today in the collection of the Museo Boldini in Ferrara2.
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57 GIOVANNI BOLDINI Ferrara 1842-1931 Paris A Path Through Trees in the Bois de Boulogne Watercolour, with some traces of an underdrawing in pencil. Laid down. Signed or inscribed Boldini in black ink at the lower right. 538 x 367 mm. (21 1/ 8 x 14 1/ 2 in.) An exceptional and somewhat compulsive draughtsman, Giovanni Boldini produced drawings and watercolours that are characterized by a restless energy and a spirited technique wholly in keeping with the bravura brushwork of his oil paintings. Like the previous drawing, this large and impressive watercolour can be dated to the early years of the 20th century, and may be compared with a number of watercolour landscapes of the same period by Boldini. These include, in particular, a large watercolour of Trees in the Bois de Boulogne in a private collection in Bologna1, as well as a study of poplars along a riverbank, signed and dated 1905, in a private collection2, and a watercolour known as After the Storm, in the collection of the Museo Boldini in Ferrara3. Thematically related to these watercolours is a small oil sketch by Boldini of trees in the Bois de Boulogne, in a private collection in Pistoia4, while a number of chalk studies of trees in the Museo Boldini may also be tentatively related to this pair of watercolours5. What may be a preparatory sketch in pencil for the composition of the present sheet is in a Milanese private collection6. In the catalogue of a recent Boldini exhibition, Sarah Lees described a stylistically comparable landscape in watercolour by the artist in terms that may likewise be applied to the present sheet: ‘its thin washes and delicate touches of opaque paint record the scene with a great economy of means. The direct, spontaneous quality of this work, almost certainly painted outdoors on the site, suggests that the artist had fully absorbed the principles of plein-air painting, though…he seems to have considered it most often in its traditional role as preparatory work, rather than as complete in its own right. This further differentiates him from his Impressionist colleagues.’7
Giovanni Boldini sketching in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris.
58 VINCENZO GEMITO Naples 1852-1929 Naples Study of the Head of a Young Woman Black chalk, with touches of grey wash, extensively heightened with white gouache, on brown paper. Signed and dated V. Gemito. 1920 in black ink at the lower right. 430 x 575 mm. (16 7/ 8 x 22 5/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: The Marchesa Giulia Albani, Naples1; Thence by descent to a private collection, Italy. After Antonio Canova, Vincenzo Gemito was perhaps the foremost Italian sculptor of the 19th century. A precocious talent, he received his early training as a young boy in the studios of the sculptors Emmanuele Caggiano and Stanislao Lista. In 1868 the sixteen-year old Gemito exhibited a sculpture at the Promotrice di Belle Arti in Naples that attracted the attention of the King of Italy, Vittorio Emmanuele II, who acquired a bronze cast of the work for the palace at Capodimonte. It was also at this time that the young sculptor gained the support of the leading Neapolitan painter Domenico Morelli. Between 1877 and 1880 Gemito lived in Paris, where he became a close friend of the French painter and sculptor Ernest Meissonier. At the Salon of 1877 he exhibited his sculpture of a Neapolitan Fisherboy to critical acclaim, earning a number of portrait commissions as a result. Gemito continued to participate in the Paris Salons after his return to Naples, winning the Grand Prix for sculpture in 1889 and a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle the following year. He also took part in the inaugural (and only) exhibition of the Société Internationale de Peintres et Sculpteurs at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1882, alongside Giovanni Boldini, John Singer Sargent, Jean Béraud and others. In 1883, with the financial support of the Belgian industrialist Baron Oscar de Mesnil, Gemito was able to set up his own foundry, located on the via Mergellina in Naples, although it was to cease production three years later. Around 1887, after he began to experience bouts of mental illness, Gemito gave up sculpture almost entirely, and spent much of next eighteen years as a recluse in his own home. He nevertheless continued to produce a large number of drawings, mostly portraits of family, friends and colleagues, as well as studies of street urchins, Neapolitan girls and other city folk. It was not until around 1909 that Gemito again took up sculpture full time, and it was in this later period of his career that he produced some of his finest work in bronze, executed with a delicacy and fineness of detail ultimately derived from his drawings. Immensely gifted as a draughtsman, Vincenzo Gemito produced a large number of figure and portrait studies in pen, chalk, pastel and watercolour. His drawings were greatly admired throughout his career, and were avidly collected by his contemporaries. (Already in his lifetime, his drawings had been likened to those of the sculptors Auguste Rodin and Constantin Meunier by one Italian scholar, in an article published in 1916.) Yet until relatively recently Gemito’s drawings have remained little known outside Italy, and it may be argued that he deserves to be recognized as not only one of the most significant sculptors of the period, but also one of its most talented and distinctive draughtsmen. In this large and impressive drawing on brown paper, Gemito has extensively applied areas of opaque white bodycolour with a brush, to create striking chiaroscuro effects. This is a technique seen in several of the artist’s drawings from the last two decades of his long career2.
59 GIUSEPPE (BEPPE) CIARDI Venice 1875-1932 Quinto di Treviso Santa Marta, Venice Oil on panel. Numbered 9 and inscribed Santa Marta in red chalk on the reverse. Further inscribed (by Emilia Ciardi) Santa Marta – Venezia / l’impressione di Beppe / Ciardi. / per l’autenticità / Emilia Ciardi in brown ink on the reverse. 117 x 192 mm. (4 5/ 8 x 7 5/ 8 in.) PROVENANCE: The artist’s wife, Emilia Ciardi, Quinto di Treviso; Thence by family descent, until 2011. Together with his younger sister Emma, Giuseppe (known as Beppe) Ciardi was a student of his father, the painter Guglielmo Ciardi. He completed his training at the Accademia in Venice, where he studied under Ettore Tito until 1899, the year in which he exhibited two paintings at the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte in Venice. In 1894 an exhibition of sixty of the young painter’s works were shown at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. In 1900 Ciardi won a prize at an exhibition at the Brera in Milan, and the following year earned a gold medal at an exhibition in Munich. Ciardi worked prolifically and achieved much success with his landscape paintings, executed with a confident handling of paint and a particular interest in effects of light. Among his significant one-man exhibitions were those at the Biennale in Venice in 1912 and 1918, the Galleria Zito in Palermo in 1920, the Galleria Geri in Rome in 1925, the Castello Sforzesco in Milan in 1936 and at the Galleria Vitelli in Genoa in 1937. A self-portrait of the artist seated at his easel, dating from 1924, is in the collection of the Uffizi in Florence1. Other paintings by Beppe Ciardi are today in museums in Florence, Genoa, Milan, Palermo, Rome, Venice and elsewhere in Italy, as well as in Paris and Barcelona. The area of Santa Marta, at the extreme southwestern tip of Venice on the Canale della Giudecca, is today the home of the city’s port. Long a poor, working class neighborhood of fishermen, the area was centred around the church and convent of Santa Marta, founded in 1315 and rebuilt in 1468. The church was deconsecrated in 1805 and was later used as a warehouse. Ciardi’s spirited oil sketch shows Santa Marta before the construction of port buildings and low income housing around the abandoned church. In the introduction to an exhibition of Beppe Ciardi’s oil sketches, it was noted of the artist that, ‘Alongside the larger works, the result of much careful thought, he gathered his most spontaneous impressions in various small paintings, struck with immediacy…These have the serene and joyful exuberance of spirit with which the artist would arrive at the truth, thereby conveying tender ideas. It is, perhaps, in no way possible to fully comprehend his more complete works without acknowledging such experiments, which are not arbitrary expressions, but delicate and intense definitions of emotional states, brought to their full pictorial conclusion. It is precisely for this that one can consider his small panels painted in oils as the most felicitous part of his oeuvre.’2 This small and vibrant oil sketch may perhaps be related to other paintings of Santa Marta by Ciardi, including one in the collection of Carlo Mera in Milan in 19423, while further oil sketches of houses at Santa Marta, some dated to 1903 or 1904, were exhibited in Milan in 19364. A stylistically comparable oil sketch by Ciardi, signed and dated 1906, appeared at auction in Rome in 19735.
60 GIACOMO BALLA Turin 1871-1958 Rome Sunset with Goldfish (Soleil couchant au poisson rouge-mer) Pastel on coloured card. Inscribed (by Benedetta Marinetti) Balla. Soleil au couchant / poisson rouge-mer / (pastel) / Cadeau de Balla a moi un / jour de l’année 1914, pendant que / j’etait dans son atelier avec la / peintre Rougena Zatkova. / Maintenant cette oeuvre appartient / a Mr. e Mrs. Harry L. Winston / Rome 1 giugno 1958 Benedetta Marinetti in black ink on the reverse of the frame backing board. 248 x 375 mm. (9 3/4 x 14 3/4 in.) PROVENANCE: Presented by the artist to Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, Rome, in c.1914; Acquired from her in 1958 by Lydia Winston (later Mrs. Barnett Malbin) and Harry Lewis Winston, Detroit, New York and Birmingham, Michigan; Lydia Winston Malbin, New York; Her sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 16 May 1990, lot 11 (bt. Krugier); Jan Krugier and Marie-Anne Poniatowski, Geneva. LITERATURE: New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Futurism: A Modern Focus. The Lydia and Harry Lewis Winston Collection (Dr. and Mrs. Barnett Malbin), exhibition catalogue, 1973, p.51, no.16; Anne Coffin Hanson, The Futurist Imagination: Word + Image in Italian Futurist Painting, Drawing, Collage and Free-Word Poetry, exhibition catalogue, New Haven, 1983, p.78, no.4, illustrated in colour pl.1; Alexander Dückers, ed., Linie, Licht und Schatten: Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, exhibition catalogue, Berlin, 1999, pp.306-307, no.145; Tomàs Llorens, ed., Miradas sin tiempo: Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Colección Jan y Marie-Anne KrugierPoniatowski, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 2000, pp.354-355, no.161 (entry by Anita BeloubekHammer); Philip Rylands, ed., The Timeless Eye: Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection, exhibition catalogue, Venice, 1999, p.395. EXHIBITED: New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Futurism: A Modern Focus. The Lydia and Harry Lewis Winston Collection (Dr. and Mrs. Barnett Malbin), 1973, no.16; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Futurism and the International Avant-Garde, 1980-1981, no.10; New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, The Futurist Imagination: Word + Image in Italian Futurist Painting, Drawing, Collage and Free-Word Poetry, 1983, no.4; Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Linie, Licht und Schatten: Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 1999, no.145; Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Miradas sin tiempo: Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Colección Jan y Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2000, no.161. A leading member of the Futurist movement in Italy, Giacomo Balla received almost no formal artistic training. Following the death of his father when he was aged just nine, he served an apprenticeship in a lithography shop, while at the same time taking drawing classes in the evenings. He also spent a few months at the Accademia Albertina in Turin. He showed some early promise as a portraitist, and also produced paintings which display an interest in social issues. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century he was painting in a quasi-Divisionist style, resulting in such dramatic paintings as Street Light of 1909, today in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which evince the artist’s lifelong interest in the symbolism of light. In 1910 Balla was one of the signatories of the first Futurist artistic manifesto, the Manifesto dei pittori futuristi, and began to take an active role in the group, founded by the theorist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He first exhibited with the Futurists in 1912. The following year he sold all of his early paintings at auction, and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the new Futurist aesthetic, with a particular interest in the representation of speed and movement. He exhibited four paintings of speeding cars in Florence at the end of 1913 and in the Futurist exhibition in London the following year. He began to experiment with paintings depicting speed using lines of force, abstract rhythmic curves and contrasting colours,
resulting in dynamic, almost aggressively centrifugal compositions. In 1914 several of his paintings were reproduced in Umberto Boccioni’s Pittura, scultura futuriste (dinamismo plastico), while the same year Balla designed for himself an angular Futurist suit, in the colours of the Italian flag. Balla’s paintings, with their emphasis on lines of ‘speed’ or ‘force’, continued to exemplify the Futurist ideal in the years of the First World War and afterwards. During the second wave of Futurism in the 1920’s, Balla remained the only artist of the first generation of Futurist painters to continue to express some of the same concerns as his younger contemporaries, with a growing interest in geometric forms. By the early 1930’s, however, Balla had reverted to his early realism in landscape paintings and portraiture, including a series of introspective self-portraits. This pastel drawing may be counted among Giacomo Balla’s abstract studies of velocity that occupied him from 1913 onwards; a period of intense creativity for the artist. The use of pastel was a characteristic of his drawings throughout this fertile period and, as Piero Pacini has noted, ‘Balla’s singular use of pastels [was] enriched by an array of dazzling, hazy, flashing light effects.’1 This drawing may in particular be compared, on technical, stylistic and compositional grounds, with such works by Balla as a small pastel (present location unknown)2 and a study in coloured chalks entitled Speeding Automobile of 1913, in the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London3. As Anne Coffin Hanson has noted of the present work, ‘The descriptive French title is unusual and may have been invented by Madame Marinetti, to whom Balla presented the work. On the other hand, it may indicate Balla’s enduring commitment to naturalistic observation as a basis for his studies of light and speed.’4 The first owner of Sunset with Goldfish (Soleil couchant au poisson rouge-mer) was Benedetta Cappa Marinetti (1897-1977), known professionally as ‘Benedetta’. An artist and writer, Benedetta studied with Giacomo Balla in Rome, and became a part of the Futurist group. In 1923 she married Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, founder of the Futurist movement. According to her inscription on the backing board, Benedetta Cappa was given this pastel by Giacomo Balla in 1914, while she was still a student, when she was in the artist’s studio in the company of her fellow Futurist painter, the Czech artist Ružena Zátková. The present sheet remained in Benedetta’s possession until the late 1950’s, when it was given or sold by her to the American collectors Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lewis Winston, who became close friends of hers. Beginning in the 1930’s, Lydia Winston Malbin (1897-1989) assembled a significant collection of major European art, with a particular focus on the work of the Italian Futurist artists. She acquired several works by Balla, for, as she noted in an interview, ‘I wanted atypical as well as typical works of artists to show the various aspects of an artist’s work...in order to understand Balla you had to know what he was doing.’5
reverse of the frame
PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
No.1 Ghirlandaio
No.32 Rosa
Fig.1 Fra Bartolommeo The Virgin and Child Pen and brown ink 122 x 65 mm. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Inv. 1545 Photo © bpk – Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Berlin
Fig.1 Salvator Rosa Figurina: A Standing Warrior in Elaborate Armour, Holding a Shield and Halberd Etching with drypoint 145 x 92 mm. London, The British Museum Inv. W,7.27 Photo © Trustees of the British Museum
No.2 Florentine School
No.33 Canuti
Fig.1 Maarten van Heemskerck The Courtyard of the Casa Sassi, Rome Pen and brown ink and brown wash 230 x 215 mm. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Inv. KdZ 2783 Photo © bpk – Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Berlin
Fig.1 Domenico Maria Canuti The Parting of Rinaldo and Armida Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over red chalk 178 x 248 mm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques Inv. 12610 recto Photo RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) - © Thierry Le Mage
No.4 Naldini or Pontormo Fig.1 Jacopo Pontormo Standing Male Nude Pen and brown ink 405 x 215 mm. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Inv. KdZ 465 recto Photo © bpk – Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen Berlin
No.14 Cigoli Fig.2 Ludovico Cardi, il Cigoli The Siege of Jerusalem Oil on canvas 151 x 201 cm Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland Inv. NGI.1812 Photo © National Gallery of Ireland
No.34 Maratta Fig.1 Carlo Maratta The Death of Saint Joseph Oil on canvas Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Inv. 121 Photo © KHM-Museumsverband
No.35 de’ Pietri Fig.1 Pietro de’ Pietri The Miracle of the Santa Casa of Loreto Oil on canvas 67 x 43.5 cm. Düsseldorf, Museum Kunstpalast, Sammlung der Kunstakademie (NRW) Inv. M 2579. Photo © Museum Kunstpalast - Horst Kolberg ARTOTHEK
Fig.2 Pietro de’ Pietri The Miracle of the Santa Casa of Loreto Pen and brown ink and brown wash 270 x 200 mm. Düsseldorf, Museum Kunstpalast, Sammlung der Kunstakademie (NRW) Inv. KA (FP) 3033. Photo © Museum Kunstpalast - Horst Kolberg - ARTOTHEK
No.37 Milani Fig.1 Gérard Audran, after Annibale Carracci The Death of Saint Francis of Assisi Etching 543 x 359 mm. London, The British Museum Inv. U,1.162 Photo © Trustees of the British Museum
No.42 Gandolfi Fig.1 Gaetano Gandolfi The Head of a Young Woman in Profile Etching, only state 143 x 99 mm. De Vesme 19; Gozzi 10/1 London, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art. Fig.2 Gaetano Gandolfi Eight Studies of Heads Pen and brown ink 236 x 136 mm. Hamburg, Dr. Moeller-Kunsthandel.
No.55 Boldini Fig.2 Giovanni Boldini “Fameux connaisseur” (Famous Connoisseur) Crayon and pencil on graph paper 169 x 110 mm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection. Inv. 1975.1.278 Photo © 2015 Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.
NOTES TO THE CATALOGUE
No.1 Ridolfo Ghirlandaio 1.
Ray Livingston Murphy (1923-1953) began collecting books while still a teenager. He served as a foreign correspondent during the Second World War, and it was in London that he met the scholar and collector Paul Oppé, who became his mentor. Murphy collected 18th and 19th century paintings and English watercolours, and later Old Master Drawings. His sudden death in 1953, at the age of just twenty-nine, left his mother devastated with grief. She moved into his house in New York and lived there until her own death, when his collection was eventually dispersed at auction.
2.
Inv. 1545; Friedrich Lippmann, Zeichnungen Alter Meister im Kupferstichkabinett der Königlichen Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, n.d. (1882?), Vol.V, illustrated pl.122; Hans von der Gabelentz, Fra Bartolommeo und die Florentiner Renaissance, Leipzig, 1922, Vol.II, p.21, no.7 (not illustrated). The drawing, which measures 122 x 65 mm., was used for the figure of the Virgin in two early paintings by Fra Bartolommeo; an Annunciation of 1497 in the Cathedral at Volterra, and a Holy Family, painted at around the same time, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
3.
New York, Colnaghi, Old Master Drawings, 1987, no.2; Griswold, op.cit., pl.25a; Olson, ed., op.cit., pp.44-45, no.52 (illustrated as frontispiece). The drawing shares the same provenance as the present sheet.
4.
Griswold, op.cit., pl.27.
5.
Griswold, op.cit., pl.26.
No.2 Florentine School 1.
What may be the original Greek bronze sculpture of the Apollo Sauroktonos by Praxiteles or his workshop was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2004 (Inv. 2004.30), although the attribution and dating of the work remain a matter of some debate; Michael Bennett, ‘The Cleveland Apollo’, The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine, September 2004, pp.4-5; Michael Bennett, ‘Une nouvelle réplique de l’Apollon Sauroctone au musée de Cleveland’, in Alain Pasquier and Jean-Luc Martinez, ed., Praxitèle, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2007, pp.206-208.
2.
Inv. KdZ 2783. A detail of the relevant part of Heemskerck’s drawing is illustrated in David Ekserdjian, ‘A Dürer Drawing and a Classical Torso’, Master Drawings, Fall 1994, p.272, fig.4. The entire sheet is illustrated in Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources, 2nd ed., London and Turnhout, 2010, illustrated p.505.
3.
David Ekserdjian, ‘Parmigianino and Michelangelo’, Master Drawings (Essays in Memory of Jacob Bean), Winter 1993, pp.390-391.
No.3 Perino del Vaga 1.
The first known owner of this drawing was the 17th century court musician Nicholas Lanier or Lanière (1588-1666), whose collector’s mark of a small five-pointed star appears at the lower left of the sheet. Lanier, who served Master of the King’s Musick at the court of King Charles I, was one of the first serious collectors of drawings in England in the 17th century. He is known to have travelled to Italy three times between 1611 and 1628, and his collection was largely composed of 16th century Italian drawings, as well as some drawings by contemporary Italian artists of the early 17th century. The attribution to Polidoro da Caravaggio at the lower right margin of the sheet would appear to be in Lanier’s hand.
2.
This drawing may have been acquired from Nicholas Lanier or his descendants by the 17th century English writer and diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706). Although Evelyn does not mention Lanier in his diary and may not have known him, he does record two visits to the collection of Lanier’s uncle, the musician Jerome Lanier, in 1652, and would also have come under the influence of Lanier’s patron, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.
3.
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Florence, 1568; translated Gaston du C. de Vere, London, 1912; 1996 ed., Vol.II, p.184.
4.
A. H. Clough, ed., Plutarch’s Lives, Vol.IV, London, 1893, pp.296-297.
5.
Lebel sale (‘Collection Robert Lebel: Dessins anciens et du XIXe siècle’), Paris, Sotheby’s, 25 March 2009, lot 13; Cordellier, Prat and van Tuyll van Serooskerken, ed., op.cit., pp.20-23, no.2. The drawing measures 285 x 202 mm., and bears several old attributions to Perino.
6.
Hugo Chapman has pointed out that what may be a related drawing, of similar dimensions, is in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt (Inv. 5590, as Anonymous Italian, 16th Century). The drawing, in pen and black or grey ink and grey wash, measures 156 x 131 mm., and is unpublished.
7.
Elena Parma, ed., Perino del Vaga tra Raffaello e Michelangelo, exhibition catalogue, Mantua, 2001, pp.118-119, no.22.
8.
Dominique Cordellier has plausibly suggested that the compositional sketch on the verso of the Pébereau drawing may be intended to depict Caesar Refusing the Crown Offered to Him by Mark Anthony.
9.
This small sketch for a frieze is drawn upside down on the verso of the Pébereau drawing (illustrated in Cordellier, Prat and van Tuyll van Serooskerken, ed., op.cit., p.23).
10. Inv. 135; Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings: Roman and Neapolitan Schools, London, 1994, p.220, no.358 (Chatsworth 135); Parma, op.cit., 2001, p.114, no.19. 11. Inv. 2933; Veronika Birke and Janine Kertész, Die Italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina: Generalverzeichnis, Vol.III, Vienna, 1995, pp.16311632, Inv.2933; Parma, op.cit., 2001, pp.115-116, no.20. 12. An interesting comparison may be made with a drawing of a naval battle, formerly in the collection of the Instituto Jovellanos in Gijón (Inv. 707) and destroyed in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, which is known only from a very poor black and white photograph. Although traditionally attributed to Baccio Bandinelli, the drawing was regarded as very close to Perino del Vaga by A. E. Popham (Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, Catálogo de la Colección de Dibujos del Instituto Jovellanos de Gijón, 2nd ed., Oviedo, 2003, p.59, no.707, illustrated p.61). 13. We are grateful to Paul Joannides for his help and advice in the preparation of this catalogue entry.
No.4 Giovanni Battista Naldini or Jacopo da Pontormo 1.
The present sheet bears the collector’s marks of two 19th century French artist-collectors. The first recorded owner of the drawing was the Parisian engraver, lithographer and draughtsman Étienne (known as Auguste) Desperet (1804-1865). A pupil of Guillaume GuillonLethière, Desperet provided illustrations for the satirical magazines Le Charivari and La Caricature in the 1830’s, and was known in particular for his wood engravings after the designs of the artist J. J. Grandville. Later employed at the Chalcographie du Louvre, Desperet made only a modest living from his work as a printmaker, yet was able to assemble a choice collection of some seven hundred drawings, mainly by French and Italian artists, which was dispersed at auction after his death, for a total of around 23,000 francs. At the sale, the present sheet was attributed to Baccio Bandinelli, and was sold, together with another drawing, for 57 francs.
2.
The painter Jean-Pierre-Victor Maziès (1836-1895) exhibited occasionally at the Salons between 1861 and 1889, showing mainly portraits. Maziès’s small collection of around thirty drawings included sheets by or attributed to Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, François Boucher, Jacques Callot, Nicolas Lancret, Ernest Meissonier, Henri Regnault and others.
3.
Inv. KdZ 465 recto; Fritz Goldschmidt, ‘Zeichnungen von Jacopo Carrucci da Pontormo’, Amtliche Berichte aus den Königlichen Kunstsammlungen, February 1915, pp.84-86, fig.32 (as Pontormo); Hermann Voss, Die Malerei der Spätrenaissance in Rom und Florenz, Berlin, 1920 [English ed., Painting of the Late Renaissance in Rome and Florence, San Francisco, 1997], Vol.I, p.150, fig.55 (as Pontormo); Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Chicago, 1938, Vol.II, p.273, no.1954A (as Pontormo), not illustrated; Janet Cox-Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo: A Catalogue Raisonne with Notes on the Paintings, 2nd ed., New York, 1981, Vol.I, p.359, no.A3 (as Naldini) [recto], not illustrated. The drawing, which is in poor condition, measures 405 x 215 mm.
4.
Berenson, ibid., p.273, under no.1954A.
5.
Inv. KdZ 465 verso; Cox-Rearick, op.cit., Vol.I, p.189, no.159, Vol.II, fig.151 (as Pontormo).
6.
Inv. 6515F recto, 6685F recto and 6599F recto; Anna Forlani Tempesti and Anna Maria Petrioli Tofani, I grandi disegni italiani degli Uffizi di Firenze, Milan, n.d. (1973?), unpaginated, no.46 (Inv. 6685F); Cox-Rearick, op.cit., Vol.I, pp.180-181, nos.135-137, Vol.II, figs.127-129, respectively; Salvatore S. Nigro, Pontormo Drawings, New York, 1992, illustrated in colour pls.25-27. Inv. 6615F is also illustrated in colour in Madrid, Fundación MAPFRE, Pontormo dibujos, exhibition catalogue, 2014, p.112, no.19.
7.
Paola Barocchi, ‘Itinerario di Giovambattista Naldini’, Arte Antica e Moderna, July-December 1965, p.245.
8.
Cox-Rearick, op.cit., Vol.I, p.5.
9.
Cox-Rearick, op.cit., Vol.I, p.359, under no.A3.
10. Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Chicago, 1938, Vol.I, p.321. 11. Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, Florence, 1681-1728, Vol.V, p.518. 12. Barocchi, op.cit., figs.88 a-d. 13. Frederick Mortimer Clapp, Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo: His Life and Work, New Haven, 1916, p.97. 14. Inv. 445F, 459F recto, 526E recto, 671E and 6699F; Cox-Rearick, op.cit., Vol.I, pp.366-368, nos.A35, A42, A46 and A48 and pp.383384, no.A131, respectively (none illustrated). Two of these are illustrated in Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, Gabinetto disegno e stampe degli Uffizi: Inventario: Disegni di figura 1, Florence, 1991, pp.191-192, no.445F (as Pontormo) and pp.197-198, no.459F (as a copy after Pontormo?). Two others are illustrated in Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, Gabinetto disegno e stampe degli Uffizi: Inventario 1: Disegni esposti, Florence, 1986, pp.235-236, no.526E (as Pontormo) and pp.293-294, no.671E (as Pontormo). 15. Inv. 671E recto and verso; Petrioli Tofani, ibid., 1986, pp.293-294, no.671E (as Pontormo). 16. Inv. 526E; Carlo Falciani, Pontormo: Disegni degli Uffizi, exhibition catalogue, Florence, 1996, pp.69-71, no.V.4, fig.47. 17. E-mail correspondence, 26 November 2013.
18. ‘Una tendenza attuale vuole comunque ravvisare la mano del maestro nel disegno esposto a Colnaghi nel 1993 e, di conseguenza, in quello di Berlino (Kupferstichkabinett inv.4646 verso) [sic]: da parte nostra, non osiamo però pronunciarci su un caso tanto delicate.’; Costamagna, op.cit., p.13, note 24. 19. Innis H. Shoemaker, The Engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi, exhibition catalogue, Lawrence and elsewhere, 1981-1982, p.125, no.34, where it is suggested that this small engraving, which measures 114 x 81 mm., may have been derived from a lost design by Raphael.
No.5 Circle of Parmigianino 1.
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, pp.301-302, no.75; Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources, 2nd ed., London and Turnhout, 2010, pp.121-122, no.75, illustrated pl.75.
2.
Haskell and Penny, ibid., p.12.
No.6 Cherubino Alberti 1.
The verso of the present sheet is a black chalk counterproof. In preparation for an engraving, Alberti would often make a counterproof of a figure he had drawn, in order to study the pose as it would appear in the finished print.
2.
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, pp.205-208, no.34. Although the first written reference to the sculpture dates from 1665, there is some evidence that it may have been known as early as the middle of the 16th century. In this drawing, the artist has altered the pose of the figure to resemble that of David standing atop the severed head of Goliath.
3.
Kristina Hermann-Fiore, Disegni degli Alberti: Il volume 2503 del Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome, 1983, pp.52-54, no.11.
4.
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 7 December 1976, lot 31. The drawings in the sketchbook have since been dispersed.
No.7 Italian School, 16th Century 1.
Inv. NM 389/1863, NM 384-385/1863, NM 387+390/1863, NM 388/1863; Per Bjurström and Börje Magnusson, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections 6. Italian Drawings: Umbria, Rome, Naples, Stockholm, 1998, unpaginated, nos.455-458, respectively. These are illustrated in colour in Nicole Dacos and Caterina Furlan, Giovanni da Udine 1487-1561, Udine, 1987, p.22, pp.250-252, nos.18-22. Two of these are also illustrated in colour in Andrea Bayer, ed., Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, exhibition catalogue, Cremona and New York, 2004, pp.86-87, no.13.
2.
London, British Museum, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo, exhibition catalogue, 1993, pp.175-176, no.105 (entry by Henrietta McBurney). The drawing measures 128 x 105 mm.
3.
Inv. 2102 Orn; Ibid., illustrated p.176, fig.3.
4.
Roberto Paolo Ciardi and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, Immagini anatomiche e naturalistiche nei disegni degli Uffizi, Secc. XVI e XVII, Florence, 1984, pp.110-114, nos.81-98, figs.87-98.
5.
London, British Museum, op.cit., p.175, under no.105.
No.8 Jacopo Negretti, called Palma Giovane 1.
This drawing bears the collector’s mark of the 18th century English collector Robert Udny (1722-1802), a West India merchant and collector of both paintings and drawings.
2.
In the first half of the 20th century the present sheet entered the collection of the art dealer Marie Marignane who, with her brother Maurice, established the gallery M. Marignane & Sœur on the rue de Rennes in Paris, dealing in paintings, drawings and prints. Like her brother, Marie Marignane assembled a small private collection of Old Master drawings. Married to the painter Jacques Patissou, she retired to Nice in 1951.
3.
Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte, Venice, 1648, Vol.II, p.203; quoted in translation in Hans Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries, New York, 1944, [1979 ed.], p.198.
4.
Antoine-Joseph Dézallier d’Argenville, Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, Paris, 1762, Vol.I, p.285.
5.
Michel Gaud sale, Monaco, Sotheby’s, 20 June 1987, lot 37.
6.
Nicola Ivanoff and Pietro Zampetti, Giacomo Negretti detto Palma Il Giovane, Bergamo, 1980, p.554, no.180, illustrated p.686, fig.5; Stefania Mason Rinaldi, Palma il Giovane: L’opera completa, Milan, 1984, pp.106-107, no.249, illustrated p.403, fig.558 (where dated c.1615-1620).
7.
Mason Rinaldi, ibid., p.75, no.24, illustrated p.403, fig.559, where dated 1614-1620.
8.
Inv. 1941,1108.15; Jane Martineau and Charles Hope, ed., The Genius of Venice 1500-1600, exhibition catalogue, London, 1983-1984, pp.264-265, no. D30 (entry by David Scrase).
9.
Ivanoff and Zampetti, op.cit., p.591, no.394, illustrated p.630, fig.3; Mason Rinaldi, op.cit., p.146, no.571, illustrated p.211, fig.67.
No.9 Avanzino Nucci 1.
Nicholas Turner, The Study of Italian Drawings: The contribution of Philip Pouncey, exhibition catalogue, London, 1994, p.114, under no.142.
2.
Inv. 1061; Jak Katalan, ‘Avanzino Nucci and the Polidoro Album’, Master Drawings, Summer 1990, p.176, fig.4. The drawing measures 300 x 205 mm.
No.10 Roman School, c.1600 1.
This drawing bears the collector’s mark of the Milanese banker Cesare Frigerio (1890-1977[?]), a sometime president of the Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde in Milan about whom relatively little else is known. He seems to have collected mainly Italian Old Master drawings, as well as some 19th century sheets. Although some of Frigerio’s drawings later entered the possession of his fellow Milanese collector Giorgio Dalla Bella (b.1923) and the German photographer Herbert List (1903-1975), both of whom he corresponded with, most of Frigerio’s drawings were dispersed after his death, and began appearing on the art market in the late 1970’s.
No.11 Bernardo Castello 1.
‘queste cose io le voglio in penna sopra carta azzurra e con tutta quella vostra minore fatica di mano e d’ingegno che sia possibile.’; Venanzio Belloni, Pittura genovese del seicento dal manierismo al barocco, Genoa, 1969, p.61.
2.
Regina Erbentraut, ‘Die >>Spinola-Fresken<< des Palazzo Pessagno Pallavicino und die Schlacht von Mühlberg’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1990, No.4, p.555, fig.19. The subject of Perseus and Andromeda also appears twice in the fresco decoration of the Villa Doria at Pegli; see Loredana Pessa Montagni, ‘Gli affreschi della villa Doria di Pegli: Un unicum del Cinquecento genovese’, Paragone, July 1986, pl.16 (as attributed to Nicolosio Granello and Luca Cambiaso) and pl.22 (as by a follower of Giovanni Battista Castello, Il Bergamasco).
3.
Fiorella Caraceni, Guide di Genova, No.80. Sampierdarena: Palazzo Centurione del Monastero, Genoa, 1979, p.6, fig.9.
4.
Pagliano, op.cit., pp.263-264, no.157; Piero Boccardo et al., Le dessin en Italie dans les collections publiques françaises. Gênes triomphante et la Lombardie des Borromée, exhibition catalogue, Ajaccio, Musée Fesch, 2006-2007, pp.24-25, no.3.
No.12 Ludovico Carracci 1.
The present sheet was once part of an album of drawings compiled by the 18th century French collector François Desmarais (or Des Marais), the contents of which were dispersed at auction in 1984. The title page of the album bore the inscription ‘Dessins origin:x / des plus fameux / Peintres, Rassemblez / Par M. Des Marais: / 1729:’. Nothing is known of François Desmarais, although he may have been an artist himself. The sale stamp D (Lugt 3358), stamped in black ink at the lower right of the present sheet, was applied to each of the drawings from the Desmarais album at the time of the 1984 sale.
2.
Babette Bohn, Ludovico Carracci and the Art of Drawing, Turnhout, 2004, p.71.
3.
Inv. Pp,3.24; Clare Robertson and Catherine Whistler, Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections, exhibition catalogue, Oxford and London, 1996-1997, p.110, no.62 (as Annibale Carracci); Babette Bohn, ibid., p.150, no.42 (as Ludovico Carracci).
4.
Inv. 85.GB.218; George R. Goldner, Lee Hendrix and Gloria Williams, The J. Paul Getty Museum - European Drawings 1: Catalogue of the Collections, Malibu, 1988, pp.34-37, no.8 (as Annibale Carracci); Nicholas Turner, The J. Paul Getty Museum; European Drawings 4: Catalogue of the Collections, Los Angeles, 2001, pp.38-41, no.14 (as Attributed to Ludovico Carracci); Bohn, op.cit., pp.161-162, no.50 (as Ludovico Carracci).
5.
Bohn, op.cit., p.163, no.51 (as Ludovico Carracci).
No.13 Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus 1.
Although this drawing, as well as another by Stradanus from the same series, are noted by Karel Boon (op.cit., p.356, note 24) as having been part of lot 1306 in the combined Mos and Nieuwenhuizen Kruseman sale in Amsterdam in November 1928, the lot numbers in the auction did not go as high as 1306, and indeed no drawings by Stradanus can be identified in the sale catalogue.
2.
I. Q. van Regteren Altena owned another drawing from this series by Stradanus; a figure of Zephaniah, sold at auction in 1974 and later with William H. Schab Gallery in New York.
3.
Manfred Sellink, in Suzanne Folds McCullagh, ed., Capturing the Sublime: Italian Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque, exhibition catalogue, Chicago, 2012, p.70, under no.29.
4.
Published as Icones Prophetarum Veteris Testamenti à Ioanne Stradano delineatae, à Ioanne Gallaeo excusae, à Corn. Gallaeo sculptae. Antverpiae; Baroni Vannucci, op.cit., pp.414-415, nos.708.1-708.18; Marjolein Leesberg, The New Hollstein: Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700. Johannes Stradanus, Part 1, Ouderkerk aan der IJssel, 2008, pp.10-23, nos.4-31. Two further editions of this series were published in later years.
5.
Baroni Vannucci, op.cit., pp.328-331, nos.648-665.
No.14 Ludovico Cardi, called Cigoli 1.
The identification of this inscription as that of the 17th century artist, engineer and collector Giovanni Navarrette is due to Miles Chappell (Chappell, op.cit., 2008, pp.68-71). As Chappell has noted of Navarette, ‘His drawings by Cigoli appear to derive from the artist himself or from a close source...With the inscribed drawings, Navarette emerges as one who can be included in the growing number of artist-collectors.’
2.
The present sheet may be included among a group of Tuscan drawings originating from albums formerly in the d’Oultremont collection in Belgium, and in all likelihood originally compiled in Florence in the 17th or 18th century. A number of drawings with this provenance, and with similar mounts and inscriptions, are in the Louvre.
3.
Miles Chappell, ‘On Some Drawings by Cigoli’, Master Drawings, Autumn 1989, No.3, p.195.
4.
Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, Florence, 1846, Vol.III, pp.276-277; quoted in translation in Chappell, ibid., p.195.
5.
Cristina Acidini Luchinat et al., The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, exhibition catalogue, Chicago and Detroit, 2002-2003, pp.156-157, no.20 (entry by Miles Chappell); Miles Chappell, ‘Proposals for the Chapel of the “Quartiere dei Cardinali e Principi forestieri” in the Palazzo Pitti’, in Arte Collezionismo Conservazione: Scritti in onore di Marco Chiarini, Florence, 2004, p.35, fig.1, illustrated in coloyr pl.VI; Suzanne Boorsch and John Marciari, Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 2006-2007, p.103, fig.25a, under no.25; Novella Barbolani di Montauto and Miles Chappell, ed., Colorire naturale e vero: Figline, il Cigoli e i suoi amici, exhibition catalogue, Figline Valdarno, 2008-2009, pp.136-137, no.3.1.
6.
Charles H. Carman, ‘An Early Interpretation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata’, Renaissance Quarterly, Spring 1978, pp.30-38, figs.1 and 4; Roberto Contini, Il Cigoli, Soncino, 1991, pp.94-95, no.28; Acidini Luchinat et al., ibid., pp.155-156, no.19 (entry by Miles Chappell).
7.
Raffaello Gualterotti, Descrizione del regale apparato fatto nella nobile città di Firenze per la venuta, e per le nozze della serenissima Madama Cristina di Loreno Moglie del Serenissimo Don Ferdinando Medici terza Gran Duca di Toscana, Florence, 1589, p.92; Carman, ibid., fig.2. A compositional study by Santi di Tito for the painting is in the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome (Inv. FC130632; Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, Il Seicento Fiorentino: Arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III., Vol.II – Disegno / Incisione / Scultura / Arti minori, pp.68-69, no.2.4).
8.
For example, Inv. 8904F; Miles L. Chappell, Disegni di Lodovico Cigoli (1559-1613), exhibition catalogue, Florence, 1992, p.17, no.9, fig.9; Barbolani di Montauto and Chappell, ed., op.cit., p.109, no.2.13.
9.
Such as a study on the verso of a drawing of Narcissus (Inv. 905 verso); Cristiana Garofalo et al, Le dessin en Italie dans les collections publiques françaises. Le Rayonnement de Florence sous les derniers Médicis: Dessins des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, exhibition catalogue, Bayonne, Musée Bonnat, 2006-2007, pp.80-81, no.28; Miles Chappell, ‘Il Cigoli e Figline: da apprendista a maestro’, in Barbolani di Montauto and Chappell, ed., op.cit., p.49, fig.23. The same torsion of a male nude, seen from behind and lifting a heavy object, is also found in a drawing by Cigoli, albeit in a different technique, in the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne (Pierre Rosenberg, ed., La donation Jacques Petithory au musée Bonnat, Bayonne: objets d’art, sculptures, peintures, dessins, Paris, 1997, pp.265-266, no.268; Garofalo, op.cit., pp.82-83, no.29).
10. Such as Inv. 8918F and Inv. 2060S; Chappell, op.cit., 1992, pp.44-46, no.26, fig.26a, illustrated in colour pl.II and p.141, no.84, fig.84, respectively. 11. London, P. & D. Colnaghi, Old Master Drawings, 1985, no.22; Stephen B. Spiro and Mary Frisk Coffman, Drawings from the Reilly Collection, 1993, pp.13-14, no.5; Edward Olszewski, A Corpus of Drawings in Midwestern Collections: Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings, Turnhout, 2008, Vol.I, pp.165-166, no.137. 12. Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s South Kensington, 16 April 1999, lot 20 (as attributed to Sigismondo Coccapani); Chappell, op.cit., 2004, p.39, fig.4-5. 13. One such example is illustrated in Miles L. Chappell et al, Disegni dei Toscani a Roma (1580-1620), exhibition catalogue, Florence, 1979, p.165, no.111, fig.139 and Chappell, op.cit., 1992, pp.184-185, no.110, fig.110.
14. Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Nobleman’), London, Christie’s, 12 December 1985, lots 192-194. Two red chalk studies of male nudes from this group are, like the present sheet, numbered in brown ink in a box or square (lots 194 and 195; numbered 3 and 8, respectively). This numbering would suggest that the drawings may have once been assembled in a folio or album 15. Inv. 1986-2-21-42; Chappell, op.cit., 1989, pls.7-8.
No.15 Andrea Boscoli 1.
‘…disegnò sì bene....senza mancare di una franchezza e bravura di tocco straordinario’; Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, Florence, 1846 ed., p.76.
2.
Inv. 8228 F and 8235 F; Anna Forlani, ‘Andrea Boscoli’, Proporzioni, 1963, pp.147-148, nos.110 and 116, one illustrated pl.LXV, fig.4; Roberto Paolo Ciardi and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, Immagini anatomiche e naturalistiche nei disegni degli Uffizi, Secc. XVI e XVII, Florence, 1984, pp.94-95, nos.46-47, figs.58-59; Mimi Cazort, Monique Kornell and K. B. Roberts, The Ingenious Machine of Nature: Four Centuries of Art and Anatomy, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa and elsewhere, 1996-1997, pp.155-156, no.43 (entry by Monique Kornell), one illustrated p.156; Nadia Bastogi, Andrea Boscoli, Florence, 2008, p.335, nos.337-338 (one illustrated).
3.
Cazort, Kornell and Roberts, ibid., p.155.
4.
Julian Brooks, The Drawings of Andrea Boscoli (c.1560-1608), unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Oxford, 1999, Vol.I, p.166.
5.
Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 23 January 2002, lot 23; Brooks, op.cit., Vol.I, p.166, p.353 (not illustrated). The drawing, in mediocre condition, measures 408 x 236 mm.
6.
Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe, ed., Giambologna 1529-1608: Sculptor to the Medici, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, London and Vienna, 1978-1979, p.200, no.194 (entry by Anthea Brook); Cazort, Kornell and Roberts, op.cit., illustrated p.156, fig.61; Roman Banaszewski et al, Treasures of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, 2000, illustrated p.99. Standing approximately 42 cm. high, this is one of three ecorché bronzes by or attributed to Francavilla in the collection of the Jagiellonian University Museum.
7.
Avery and Radcliffe, ibid., p.200, under no.194.
8.
Ciardi and Tongiorgi Tomasi, op.cit., p.91, no.41, figs.38-39. A late bronze cast after the wax original in the Bargello is illustrated in Cazort, Kornell and Roberts, op.cit., pp.239-240, no.127.
9.
Inv. 8227 F, 8230 F and 8234 F; Forlani, op.cit., pp.147-148, nos.109 and 115 (not illustrated); Ciardi and Tongiorgi Tomasi, op.cit., p.95, nos.48-49, figs.60-61; Bastogi, op.cit., pp.335-336, nos.339-341 (not illustrated).
10. ‘Da notare l’eroica dinamicità di questi studi anatomici, le cui pose si ritrovano anche in alcuni disegni dal modello. Lo stile grafico e la tecnica molto pittorica con l’uso della biacca e della carta cerulea, concordano con una datazione alle fine del secolo.’; Bastogi, ibid., p.335, under no.337. While Anna Forlani Tempesti agreed with this dating (Forlani, op.cit., p.147, under no.110), Julian Brooks has suggested a slighty earlier date of c.1590-1595 for these drawings, while Monique Kornell (Cazort, Kornell and Roberts, op.cit., p.156) has dated the Uffizi drawings to the late 1570’s or early 1580’s.
No.16 Attributed to Guglielmo Caccia, il Moncalvo 1.
For example, a drawing of a standing figure and two seated putti (Inv. 14664 S.M.); Gianni Carlo Sciolla, ed., From Leonardo to Rembrandt: Drawings from the Royal Library of Turin, exhibition catalogue, Turin, 1990, pp.190-191, no.74; Giovanni Romano and Carla Enrica Spantigati, Guglielmo Caccia detto Il Moncalvo (1568-1625): Dipinti e disegni, exhibition catalogue, Casale Monferrato, 1997, pp.58-59, no.6. A number of similar drawings of putti are in the same collection (Inv. 14678, 14671, 14669 and 14674; Aldo Bertini, I disegni italiani della Biblioteca Reale di Torino, Rome, 1958, p.39, nos.254-258).
2.
Woodner sale (‘Old Master Drawings from The Woodner Collection’), London, Christie’s, 2 July 1991, lot 101.
3.
London, P. & D. Colnaghi, Exhibition of Old Master Drawings, 1968, no.8 (not illustrated); Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 15 June 1983, lot 10 (not illustrated). A photograph of this drawing, which measures 220 x 155 mm., is in the Witt Library at the Courtauld Instutute of Art in London.
No.17 Pietro Faccini 1.
This drawing bears the collector’s mark of the 18th century painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). The leading portrait painter in England, Reynolds’s fame and success allowed him to assemble one of the largest collections of paintings, drawings and prints of his day. His collection of several thousand drawings, for the most part Italian works of the 16th and 17th centuries, was sold at two auctions in 1794 and 1798. The present sheet may be counted among the 54 sheets by or attributed to Correggio owned by Reynolds.
2.
The traveller and classical scholar J. B. S. Morritt (1771-1843), of Rokeby Hall in Yorkshire, likely acquired this drawing at one of the sales of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s collection.
3.
Donald Posner, ‘Pietro Faccini and the Carracci: Notes on some Drawings in the Louvre’, Paragone, November 1960, p.51.
4.
‘…tanto disegni dal nudo, che infiniti si vedano di que’ suoi modelli in tutte le più famose raccolte...così strepitosi, così guizzanti, svolazzanti, e quel ch’è più, così facile e franchi, che sembrano del suo maestro, come per di sua mano molti tutto il di si vendono.’; Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: vite de’ pittori Bolognesi, Bologna, 1678, supplemented and annotated by G. Zanotti, 1841 ed., p.398.
5.
Mario di Giampaolo, ‘Introduction’, in Elizabeth Llewellyn and Cristiana Romalli, Drawing in Bologna 1500-1600, exhibition catalogue, London, 1992, unpaginated.
6.
This particular figure is illustrated in Cecil Gould, The Paintings of Correggio, London, 1976, pl.132, and in Carolyn Smyth, Correggio’s Frescoes in Parma Cathedral, Princeton, 1997, fig.65. A detail of the head of the youth is illustrated in colour in Lucia Fornari Schianchi et al, Correggio e le sue cupole, Parma, 2008, p.271.
7.
Inv. 172; DeGrazia, op.cit., p.378, under no.128, note 3 and fig.128b.
8.
Inv. 14002; Catherine Loisel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens X: Dessins bolonais du XVIIe siècle, pt.II, Paris and Milan, 2013, pp.153-154, no.180.
9.
Inv. Pp,3.14; Catherine Loisel, ‘Ludovico, Agostino et Annibale Carracci: Une aventure artistique’, in Catherine Loisel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens VII: Ludovico, Agostino, Annibale Carracci, Paris, 2004, p.31, fig.33; Esposito in Plymouth, op.cit., p.129, no.55. Both the British Museum drawing and the present sheet belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds.
10. Legrand, op.cit., pp.66-67, no.41; Loisel, ibid., 2004, pp.212-213, no.424.
No.18 Pietro Faccini 1.
Diane DeGrazia, Correggio and His Legacy: Sixteenth-Century Emilian Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Washington, 1984, p.374.
2.
Mario di Giampaolo, ‘Introduction’, in Elizabeth Llewellyn and Cristiana Romalli, Drawing in Bologna 1500-1600, exhibition catalogue, London, 1992, unpaginated.
3.
Nicholas Turner, ‘The mind of the master’, British Museum Society Bulletin, March 1987, p.9.
4.
Inv. 996-7-348; Mario di Giampaolo, ‘Un appunto su Pietro Faccini disegnatore’, Bollettino d’Arte, April-June 1979, p.105, fig.8 (as location unknown); Sylvie Béguin, Mario di Giampaolo and Philippe Malgouyres, ed., Disegni della Donazione Marcel Puech al museo Calvet di Avignone, Naples, 1998, pp.118-119, no.59 (entry by Mario di Giampaolo); Diederik Bakhüys et al., Le dessin en Italie dans les collections publiques françaises. Le Génie de Bologne des Carracci aux Gandolfi: Dessins des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, exhibition catalogue, Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2006-2007, pp.44-45, no.14.
5.
Inv. 7023; Mario di Giampaolo, ‘Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings’ [book review], Dialoghi di Storia dell’Arte, October 1995, p.177, fig.5; Catherine Loisel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens X: Dessins bolonais du XVIIe siècle, pt.II, Paris and Milan, 2013, p.147, no.165.
6.
Inv. Ff,2.126 and 1895,0915.698, respectively. The former is illustrated in Emilio Negro and Nicosetta Roio, Pietro Faccini 1575/761602, Modena, 1997, p.123, no.54a. The British Museum drawing is illustrated in Mario di Giampaolo, ‘Nota in margine a una ‘Sacra Conversazione’ di Pietro Faccini’, in Itinerari: Contributi alla storia dell’arte in memoria di Maria Luisa Ferrari, Florence, 1984; reprinted in Cristiana Garofalo, ed., Mario Di Giampaolo: Scritti sul disegno italiano 1971-2008, Florence, 2010, pp.250-251, fig.6.
7.
Inv. 13782; Gernsheim no.187045 (as Schedone).
8.
Inv. 7091 and 7092 (Gernsheim no.6879); di Giampaolo, op.cit., 1984, reprinted 2010, pp.250-251, figs.2-3; Loisel, op.cit., pp.137-138, nos.149-150.
9.
Inv. 8229; Donald Posner, ‘Pietro Faccini and the Carracci: Notes on some Drawings in the Louvre’, Paragone, November 1960, p.52, pl.36a; di Giampaolo, op.cit., 1984, reprinted 2010, p.252, fig.4; Loisel, op.cit., pp.138-139, no.151, illustrated in colour p.26, pl.6.
10. Posner, ibid., p.52. 11. Emilio Negro and Nicosetta Roio, Giacomo Cavedone 1577-1660, Modena, 1996, p.34, fig.31; Negro and Roio, op.cit., 1997, pp.110111, no.30, where dated to between 1599 and 1601. The painting measures 67.7 x 56.5 cm. 12. Inv. 1465; Veronika Birke, Italian Drawings 1350-1800: Masterworks from the Albertina, exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth and Los Angeles, 1992-1993, no.163; Veronika Birke and Janine Kertész, Die Italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina: Generalverzeichnis, Voll.II, Vienna, 1994, pp.782-783, Inv.1465. 13. Inv. 1986-6-21-4; Turner, op.cit., p.9. 14. K. T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum; Volume II: Italian Schools, Oxford, 1956, p.105, no.219 (not illustrated); New York, Wildenstein, Italian Drawings from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, exhibition catalogue, 1970, unpaginated, no.44.
No.20 Attributed to Cristofano Allori 1.
Miles L. Chappell, ‘Cristofano Allori’, in Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art, London, 1996, Vol.1, p.672.
2.
‘Venne poi a capriccio del nostro pittore d’imparare a far bene i paesi, e per tale effetto andava sovente fuori della città, ritraendo al naturale belle vedute di campagna, con mattita rossa e nera; di queste aveva fatte molto in un quadernetto di quarto di foglio in circa, tanto ben macchiate che parevan colorite, le quali tutte possiede oggi chi queste cose scrive, e ha dato loro luogo in un de’ due suoi libri fra I disegni de’ più eccellenti maestri di que’tempi, dei quali ha egli fatto raccolta.’; Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, Milan, 1812, p.265.
3.
Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens IV: Dessins toscans, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, pt.2: 1620-1800, Paris, 2005, pp.74-79, nos. 12-26.
4.
Miles Chappell, ‘Theories of Relativity for Some Florentine Drawings’, Artibus et Historiae, No.61, 2010, p.63.
5.
Chappell, op.cit., 1996, p.672.
6.
Chappell, op.cit., 2010, p.62, fig.27.
No.21 Belisario Corenzio 1.
This drawing was part of an album of drawings once in the possession of the 17th century collector Don Gaspar Méndez de Haro y Guzman, Marqués del Carpio y Helice (1629-1687), who served as Spanish ambassador in Rome from 1677 to 1683, and then as Viceroy of Naples from 1683 until his death. It was while he was living in Italy that Carpio assembled his large collection of drawings, arranged into some forty-three albums. The album in which the present sheet was included was, for the most part, made up of drawings by Neapolitan artists, and its contents were dispersed at auction in London in 1973. The group included a total of five drawings by Belisario Corenzio, each inscribed Bilisario in the same hand, which is thought to predate Carpio’s ownership.
2.
‘si vedono di Belisario moltissimi disegni...E veramente alcuni de’ suoi massimamente di figure, sono di tanta bontà che sembrano di mano di Tintoretto; ad imitazione del quale usava egli disegnare su carta tinte, lumeggiata di biacca’; Bernardo de Dominici, Vite de’pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, Naples, 1742-45, Vol.II, pp.315-316.
No.22 Giacomo Cavedone 1.
Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 1 July 1986, lot 83; Linda Wolk-Simon, Italian Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, exhibition catalogue, Gainesville and elsewhere, 1991-1993, pp.72-75, no.18; Horvitz sale (‘The Jeffrey E. Horvitz Collection of Italian Drawings’), New York, Sotheby’s, 23 January 2008, lot 57 (unsold); Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 4 November 2011, lot 65.
2.
See, for example, Inv. nos. 0834, 5248, 5291 and 5268; Otto Kurz, Bolognese Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1955, pp.90-93, nos.95, 119, 124 and 126, pl.18, figs.19 and 20, and pl.22, respectively.
3.
Inventory ‘A’, p.84; quoted in Kurz, ibid., p.90.
4.
Inv. 5278; Kurz, ibid., p.90, no.78 (not illustrated). The drawing measures 387 x 252 mm.
No.23 Aurelio Lomi 1.
Several Florentine drawings with the same later provenance as the present sheet are inscribed in the distinctive handwriting of the 17th century Florentine engineer, draughtsman and collector Giuseppe Santini. A native of Pisa and a pupil of the sculptor Ferdinando Tacca, Santini seems to have been an avid collector of the drawings of his Florentine contemporaries.
2.
Roberto Paolo Ciardi, Maria Clelia Galassi and Pierluigi Carofano, Aurelio Lomi: Maniera e invenzione, Pisa, 1989, p.211, no.31, illustrated in colour p.108, pl.XL.
3.
Inv. 975-4-1883; Mario di Giampaolo, ‘Aurelio Lomi disegnatore’, in Disegni genovesi dal Cinquecento al Settecento: Giornate di Studio (910 Maggio 1989), Florence, 1992; reprinted in Cristiana Garofalo, ed., Mario Di Giampaolo: Scritti sul disegno italiano 1971-2008, Florence, 2010, p.307, fig.11; Cristiana Garofalo et al., Le dessin en Italie dans les collections publiques françaises. Le Rayonnement de Florence sous les derniers Médicis: Dessins des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, exhibition catalogue, Bayonne, Musée Bonnat, 2006-2007, pp.42-43, no.11.
4.
di Giampaolo, ibid., p.313, fig.25; Turcic and Newcome, op.cit., p.43, no.21.
5.
Inv. RF 5306; di Giampaolo, op.cit., pp.305-306, figs.7-8; Turcic and Newcome, op.cit., p.40, no.14.
6.
Inv. 1966,0303.1; Ciardi, Galassi and Carofano, op.cit., pp.239-240, nos.55a and 55b, figs.21 and 22; Turcic and Newcome, op.cit., p.41, no.15; Nicholas Turner, The Study of Italian Drawings: The contribution of Philip Pouncey, exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum, 1994, pp.79-80, no.94.
7.
Inv. KdZ 16368; Turcic and Newcome, op.cit., pp.39-40, no.12, pls.36-37.
No.24 Remigio Cantagallina 1.
Vol.B, no.45. Unmounted photograph in the Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
2.
One example is illustrated in Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, Il Seicento Fiorentino: Arti a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III, Vol.II, exhibition catalogue, 1987, p.179, no.2.127.
3.
Patrick Ramade, ‘Inventaire des dessins italiens’, in Modena, Galleria Estense and Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Disegno: Les dessins italiens du Musée de Rennes, exhibition catalogue, 1990, p.200, no.28 (as attributed to Baccio del Bianco). Another drawing attributed to Baccio del Bianco in Rennes; a study of two figures similar to those in the right foreground of the Colnaghi drawing, bears an old attribution to Cantagallina and may also be by him (ibid., p.200, no.29).
4.
Christian Humann sale, New York, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 30 April 1982, lots 28 and 29. The latter was later in the collection of Pierre de Charmant (his sale, Paris, Christie’s, 21 March 2002, lot 47).
No.25 Pietro Novelli, il Monrealese 1.
Guido di Stefano, Pietro Novelli, il Monrealese, Palermo, 1989, pp.220-221, no.46, pls.42-44.
2.
Palermo, Albergo dei Poveri, op.cit., p.390, no.III-18 (incorrectly illustrated p.392 as no.III-19).
3.
di Stefano, op.cit., p.308, no.180.3.
No.26 Stefano della Bella 1.
Inv. 373; Françoise Viatte, Musée du Louvre: Cabinet des dessins. Inventaire général des dessins italiens II: Dessins de Stefano della Bella, Paris, 1974, p.67, no.65, illustrated p.70.
2.
Alexandre de Vesme and Phyllis Dearborn Massar, Stefano della Bella: Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1971, Vol.I, p.103, no.477; Vol.II, p.105, fig.477.
3.
Inv. R.r. 2060; Jolanta Talbierska, Stefano della Bella (1610-1664): Etchings from the Collection of the Print Room of the Warsaw University Library, Warsaw, 2001, illustrated p.332.
4.
Inv. FC 125977; Maria Catelli Isola, Disegni di Stefano Della Bella dalle collezioni del Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 1976, p.20, no.6, fig.6; David Klemm, Von der Schönheit der Linie: Stefano della Bella als Zeichner, exhibition catalogue, Hamburg, 2013-2014, p.268, under no.114, illustrated in colour.
5.
De Vesme and Massar, op.cit., Vol.I, p.72, nos.132-133; Vol.II, p.41, figs.132-133.
No.27 Stefano della Bella 1.
Alexandre de Vesme and Phyllis Dearborn Massar, Stefano della Bella: Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1971, Vol.I, pp.158-159, nos.10451050; Vol.II, pp.229-230, figs.1045-1050. The motif of the seated nymphs also finds parallels in some examples from a set of decorative etchings of the same date; the Raccolta di varii cappriccii et nove inventioni di cartelle et ornamenti, published in Paris in 1646 (de Vesme and Massar, op.cit., Vol.I, pp.156-158, nos.1027-1044; Vol.II, pp.224-228, figs. 1027-1044).
2.
de Vesme and Massar, op.cit., Vol.I, p.159, nos.1049; Vol.II, p.230, fig.1049.
3.
Inv. 405-1; Françoise Viatte, Musée du Louvre: Cabinet des dessins. Inventaire général des dessins italiens II: Dessins de Stefano della Bella, Paris, 1974, pp.104-105, no.145, fig.145, a detail illustrated on p.15.
4.
Phyllis Dearborn Massar, Presenting Stefano della Bella: Seventeenth-century Printmaker, New York, 1971, p.71.
5.
A very rough translation of this text would be: ‘My fortune, speak to my heart, sore with love, I will give them back, blind persistence you say no, no, blind persistence you only say no, no...be happy in any case.’ I am grateful to Amanda Hilliam for her assistance in transcribing and translating the text.
No.28 Francesco Montelatici, called Cecco Bravo 1.
Miles Chappell, ‘Florence: Cecco Bravo’ [exhibition review], The Burlington Magazine, October 1999, p.646
2.
Quoted in translation by Miles Chappell in Suzanne Folds McCullagh, ed., Capturing the Sublime: Italian Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque, exhibition catalogue, Chicago, 2012, p.166, under no.91.
3.
Laura Giles, in Laura Giles, Lia Markey and Claire van Cleave, Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, 2014, p.172, under no.71.
4.
Nicholas Turner, European Master Drawings from Portuguese Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, 2000, pp.118-119, no.50.
5.
Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens IV: Dessins toscans, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, pt.2: 1620-1800, Paris, 2005, pp.158-159, no.157.
6.
Anna Barsanti and Roberto Contini, Cecco Bravo: pittore senza regola, exhibition catalogue, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 1999, pp.92-93, no.26.
No.29 Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino 1.
‘...alcuni disegni di sua, balli, feste, e sponsalizi costumati nella sua Rocca di Cento, imitando l’idee, il portamento e le sembianze di quei rusticani, e di quelle foretane del Paese, li quali, per verità, erano curiosi, e bene imitati.’; Jacob Hess, Die Künstlerbiographien von Giovanni Battista Passeri, Leipzig and Vienna, 1934, p.347.
2.
David M. Stone, Guercino: Master Draftsman. Works from North American Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge and elsewhere, 1991, p.178, under no.77.
3.
Nicholas Turner, Guercino: Drawings from Windsor Castle, exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth and elsewhere, 1991-1992, p.36, under no.9.
4.
Sale (‘Property of a Gentleman, Formerly in the Collection of Colonel Norman Colville M.C.’), London, Christie’s, 9 April 2003, lot 103 (as by a Roman Follower of Annibale Carracci); Clovis Whitfield, ‘A Name for a Ridiculous Man’, in Volker Manuth and Axel Rüger, ed., Collected Opinions: essays on Netherlandish Art in Honour of Alfred Bader, London, 2004, illustrated p.240, fig.1 (as Antonio Carracci); Fausto Gozzi, ‘“Give, give to the madman”: Guercino and Caricature’, in Cento, Pinacoteca Civica, and London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Nel segno di Guercino / Guercino as Master Draughtsman: Drawings from the Mahon Collection, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and the City of Cento Pinacoteca Civica di Cento, exhibition catalogue, 2005-2006, p.47, illustrated p.40, fig.20. The painting was given to the museum in Cento by Sir Denis Mahon, who was the first to attribute the canvas to Guercino.
5.
Gozzi, ibid., p.47.
6.
Inv. 1922.493.
7.
Anonymous sale, Florence, Gonnelli, 14 June 2012, lot 169.
8.
As suggested by David Stone in e-mail correspondence, April-May 2015.
9.
Inv. 2913; Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge, 1989, p.113, no.289, pl.265; Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum, 1991, p.214, no.195, illustrated in colour pl.28 (where dated to the mid-1620’s).
10. Turner and Plazzotta, ibid., pp.226-227, no.212. 11. Julian Brooks, Guercino: Mind to Paper, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles and London, 2006-2007, pp.64-65, no.19. The drawing is in the collection of Gifford Combs, Los Angeles. 12. Turner and Plazzotta, op.cit., p.205. 13. Brooks, op.cit., p.15.
No.30 Clemente Bocciardo 1.
A number of Florentine drawings with the same later provenance as the present sheet are inscribed in the distinctive handwriting of the late 17th century Florentine engineer, draughtsman and collector Giuseppe Santini.
2.
The inscription on the mount is similar to those found on a number of drawings by Tuscan artists from albums formerly in the collection of Comte Eugène d’Oultremont (1845-1916) in Belgium, and in all likelihood originally compiled in Florence in the 17th or 18th century. A number of drawings with this provenance, and with similar mounts and inscriptions, are in the Louvre (see, for example, Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens IV: Dessins toscans, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, pt.2: 1620-1800, Paris, 2005, p.390, no.572 [a drawing by Giovanni Battista Tempesti]).
3.
Inv. 1934,1001.2; Mary Newcome, ‘Artists in the Shadow of Castiglione’, Paragone, 1982, pl.13; Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, Italian 16th and 17th Century Drawings from the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, 1996, pp.246-247, no.96. The appearance of the artist is also recorded in two painted self-portraits in the Uffizi. A portrait engraving of Bocciardo, based on a drawing by Giovanni Domenico Campiglia and engraved by Pier Antonio Pazzi, was included as part of the Serie di ritratti dei pittori, published in Florence between 1752 and 1762.
4.
Inv. 9471 and 1928; Mary Newcome-Schleier, Le dessin à Gênes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1985, pp.92-93, nos.78-79. The first of these is also illustrated in Piero Boccardo et al, Le dessin en Italie dans les collections publiques françaises. Gênes triomphante et la Lombardie des Borromée, exhibition catalogue, Ajaccio, Musée Fesch, 2006-2007, pp.118-119, no.49, where the attribution to Bocciardo is rejected.
No.31 Neapolitan School 1.
Nicola Spinosa, Pittura del seicento a Napoli. Vol.I: da Caravaggio a Massimo Stanzione, Naples, 2010, pp.278-279, no.205 (as location unknown).
2.
Ibid., p.278, no.204.
3.
Inv. 151; Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, Catálogo de la Colección de Dibujos del Instituto Jovellanos de Gijón, 2nd ed., Oviedo, 2003, pp.266267, no.151. The drawing, which is only known from an old photograph, bore an old attribution to Francesco Fracanzano, and measured 240 x 180 mm.
No.32 Salvator Rosa 1.
The earliest known owner of this drawing was the English portrait painter, author and connoisseur Jonathan Richardson, Senior (16671745), whose collector’s mark is found at the lower right corner of the sheet. Richardson owned a remarkable collection of nearly five thousand drawings, mostly Italian works of the 16th and 17th centuries, assembled over a period of about fifty years.
2.
A note on the backing sheet of this drawing states that the drawing later belonged to an ‘A. Scott Carter’; this may be Alexander Scott Carter (1881-1968), an English-born heraldry artist who settled in Toronto, Canada.
3.
Bartsch 44; Wallace, op.cit., 1979, p.168, no.37; Olimpia Theodoli, Salvator Rosa: Acqueforti, Bergamo, 1992, pp.108-109, no.37. Only one state of this etching, which measures 145 x 98 mm., is known. However, Wallace notes an earlier, unfinished but identical variant of the etching (Wallace, op.cit., 1979, p.169, no.38; Theodoli, op.cit., pp.110-111, no.38), to which the present sheet is also related.
4.
That the Figurine were done for the artist’s pleasure is indicated by the Latin dedication on the frontispiece (Bartsch 25, Wallace 6), which may be translated as ‘Salvator Rosa dedicates these prints of playful leisure to Carlo de’ Rossi as a pledge of outstanding friendship.’.
5.
Helen Langdon, ‘Bandits and Soldiers’, in Helen Langdon, Xavier Salomon and Caterina Volpi, Salvator Rosa, exhibition catalogue, London and Fort Worth, 2010-2011, pp.182-183.
6.
Wallace, op.cit., p.26.
7.
Richard W. Wallace, ‘Salvator Rosa’s Figurine in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’, Print Quarterly, March 1989, p.48.
No.33 Domenico Maria Canuti 1.
Inv. 12610; Catherine Loisel, Musée du Louvre: Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins italiens X: Dessins bolonais du XVIIe siècle, pt.II, Paris and Milan, 2013, p.482, no.864, illustrated in colour p.63, pl.43. The drawing measures 178 x 248 mm.
2.
Andrea Czére, ‘Nuovi disegni del Canuti’, Storia dell’arte, 1993, p.167, fig.7.
3.
Inv. NM 1156/1863 and NM 1157/1863; Per Bjurström, Catherine Loisel and Elizabeth Pilliod, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections 8. Italian Drawings: Florence, Siena, Modena, Bologna, Stockholm, 2002, unpaginated, nos.1336-1337.
4.
Inv. 3807; Otto Kurz, Bolognese Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1955, p.148, no.710 (as Anonymous), not illustrated. The attribution of the Windsor drawing to Canuti is made in Loisel, op.cit., p.482, under no.863.
5.
Inv. 18031 and 12351, respectively; Loisel, op.cit., p.482, no.863, illustrated in colour p.62, pl.42 and pp.479-480, no.860, respectively.
6.
Bjurström, Loisel and Pilliod, op.cit., nos.1341-1345.
7.
Mimi Cazort and Catherine Johnston, Bolognese Drawings in North American Collections 1500-1800, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, 1982, pp.108-109, no.68, p.235, fig.68.
No.34 Carlo Maratta 1.
The present sheet was once part of an album of drawings by Carlo Maratta and other artists, probably assembled in the late 17th century or early 18th century. The album included twenty-seven chalk drawings by Maratta, most of which were preparatory studies for paintings, as well as a few drawings by his chief pupil Niccolò Berrettoni and a handful of works by earlier artists including Parmigianino, Agostino Carracci, Taddeo Zuccaro, Federico Barocci and Guercino. The drawings in the album were laid onto mounts inscribed with the names of the artists; the handwriting is no later than the early 18th century and would appear to be that of the collector or connoisseur who assembled the album. Later owned by the Shirley family at Ettington Park in Warwickshire, the album was acquired in 1937 by P. & D. Colnaghi from Lt. Col. George Ambrose Cardew on behalf of his son-in-law, Lt Col. Evelyn Charles Shirley of Ettington Park. Most of the Maratta drawings in the album were later acquired from Colnaghi’s by such private collectors as Sir Robert Witt, Sir Brinsley Ford, Villiers David, Sir Thomas Barlow, Frits Lugt and Philip Hofer. Drawings by Maratta from the Ettington Park album are today in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, the Fondation Custodia in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and elsewhere.
2.
The present sheet was purchased for the sum of £10.00.
3.
Giovan Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects: A New Translation and Critical Edition, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl and ed. Hellmut Wohl, New York, 2005, p.399.
4.
Maratta also assembled a large personal collection of drawings by other artists, including Domenichino and Sacchi, much of which is today in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.
5.
In written correspondence with a previous owner, 9 November 1977.
6.
Inv. 121; Eduard r. v. Engerth, Kunsthistorische Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses. Gemälde. Beschreibendes Verzeichniss. Vol.I: Italienische, Spanische und Französische Schulen, Vienna, 1882, pp.205-206, no.291 (not illustrated); Amalia Mezzetti, ‘Contributi a Carlo Maratti’, Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale d’Archaologia e Storia dell’Arte, 1955, p.347, no.166 (not illustrated); Friderike Klauner, Die Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, Salzburg and Vienna, 1978, p.390, fig.203.
7.
As Bellori writes of the painting, ‘During the time when Cardinal Alberizzi was nuncio in Germany, while the old Empress Eleonore was alive, he had an opportunity to promote Carlo [Maratta] with this princess…She was a devotee of Saint Joseph, hence she ordered a picture from him of the death of the saint for her chapel in Vienna. Notified by the cardinal, Carlo made a highly finished drawing that met the expectations of the empress, and it was very dear to her. He proceeded with the painting on a canvas about 18 palmi in height, arched at the top, with figures larger than reality. He displayed the aged saint lying weakly on his bed with his hand on his half-naked breast and his face drooping, his eyes languid, his lips breathing his last breaths. At his feet Jesus Christ attends him and blesses him, at the other side is the Virgin, sorrowful, with her hands twined in her lap; in the foreground and at the side two angels kneel devoutly, and another one beside them lifts a golden vessel in both hands, sending smoke with sweet odors up to heaven as a token of the virtues that this sainted patriarch practiced in life; two angels emerge from the clouds overhead and gaze piously at the dying Joseph as if awaiting his perfectly pure soul in order to bear it up to beatitude, and they are preceded by three winged children, one of whom bears the saint’s flowering rod; and closer to the bed three cherubs are approaching; and paradise opens in that chamber.’; Bellori (trans. Wohl), op.cit., p.412.
8.
Ann Sutherland Harris and Eckhard Schaar, Die Handzeichnungen von Andrea Sacchi und Carlo Maratta, Düsseldorf, 1967, pp.112-113, no.280 verso and pp.115-116, nos.293-296 (none illustrated).
9.
Ibid., p.123, no.323, fig.84
10. Inv. 1928-42-4025; Ann Percy, ‘Collecting Italian Drawings at Philadelphia: Two Nineteenth-Century Amateurs and a Twentieth-Century Scholar’, in Ann Percy and Mimi Cazort, Italian Master Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2004, p.19, fig.VIII, p.264. The drawing, in red chalk on blue paper, measures 344 x 420 mm. 11. Mezzetti, op.cit., p.287, fig.36. 12. Sutherland Harris and Schaar, op.cit., pp.117-118, nos.298 and 304, figs.76 and 80.
No.35 Pietro de’ Pietri 1.
Ulrich W. Heisinger and Ann Percy, ed., A Scholar Collects: Selections from the Anthony Morris Clark Bequest, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, 1980-1981, p.17, under no.7.
2.
Manuela Mena Marqués, Italian Drawings of the 17th and 18th Centuries from the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1989-1990, p.97.
3.
Inv. M 2579; Dieter Graf, ‘New Drawings by Pietro Antonio de Pietri’, Master Drawings (Essays in Memory of Jacob Bean), Winter 1993, p.443, p.447, note 18 (not illustrated). The oil sketch on canvas measures 67 x 43.5 cm.
4.
Inv. FP 3033; Graf, ibid., illustrated p.444, fig.6. The drawing measures 270 x 200 mm.
5.
Inv. 12386; Catherine Legrand and Domitilla d’Ormesson-Peugeot, La Rome Baroque de Maratti à Piranèse: Dessins du Louvre et des collections publiques françaises, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1990-1991, pp.94-95, no.89, figs. 89 recto and 89 verso. The drawing measures 269 x 200 mm.
6.
Graf, op.cit., p.443.
7.
Loretta Mozzoni and Marta Paraventi, In viaggio con San Cristoforo: Pellegrinaggi e devozione tra Medio Evo e Età Moderna, exhibition catalogue, Jesi, 2000-2001, pp.184-185, no.42 (entry by Costanza Costanzi). The painting, which measures 217 x 140 cm., must have been installed in the church before 1706, the year of the death of its patron, Cristoforo Magni.
No.36 Giuseppe Passeri 1.
Laura Giles, in Laura Giles, Lia Markey and Claire van Cleave, Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, 2014, p.176, under no.73.
2.
Inv. 8015; Gernsheim photograph no. 102820; Manuela B. Mena Marqués, Dibujos Italianos de los siglos XVII y XVIII en la Biblioteca Nacional, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 1984, pp.185-187, no.176.
4.
Inv. 7959; Ibid., pp.186-187, no.177; Manuela Mena Marqués, Italian Drawings of the 17th and 18th Centuries from the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1989-1990, pp.94-95, no.66.
4.
Illa Budde, Beschreibener Katalog der Handzeichnungen in der Staatlichen Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, 1930, p.53, no.402, pl.60, fig.402; Dieter Graf, Die Handzeichnungen des Giuseppe Passeri, Düsseldorf, 1995, Vol.I, p.167, no.649, Vol.II, p.307, fig.1016.
5.
Anthony Blunt and Hereward Lester Cooke, The Roman Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1960, p.75, nos.585 and 586, pl.63; Graf, ibid., Vol.I, p.401, figs.267 and 268.
6.
Graf, op.cit., Vol.I, p.401, fig.266.
No.37 Aureliano Milani 1.
‘i suoi disegni possono andar dei pari con quelli di qualunque gran maestro, per carattere, per la prontezza, per la grandiosita, e per la disinvoltura, con la quale sono toccati, lumeggiati e macchiati’’; Luigi Crespi, Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori bolognese...che serve di supplemento all’opera del Malvasia, Rome, 1769, p.147.
2.
Donald Posner, Annibale Carracci: A Study in the Reform of Italian Painting around 1590, Vol.II, p.44, no.101, pl.101; Evelina Borea and Ginevra Mariani, ed., Annibale Carracci e i suoi incisori, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 1986, pp.97-98, no.XXXV. The etching measures 543 x 359 mm. A later engraving by Jean Thouvenin (Borea and Mariani, op.cit., p.98, no.XXXV.2) also reproduces this lost painting by Annibale Carracci. A drawing by Annibale Carracci for the figure of Saint Francis, in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, serves to confirm his authorship of the composition (Inv. 1949 verso; Rudolf Wittkower, The Drawings of the Carracci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1952, p.143, no.341, pl.54).
3.
Inv. F.D 1.850; Manuela B. Mena Marqués, Museo del Prado. Catálogo de Dibujos: Dibujos italianos del siglo XVIII y del siglo XIX, Madrid, 1990, pp.106-107, no. F.D. 1.850, illustrated p.339, fig.193. The drawing measures 572 x 372 mm.
No.38 Marco Ricci 1.
Inv. 567.1929; Agnes Mongan and Paul J. Sachs, Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, 1946, Vol.I, pp.171-172, no.345, Vol.II, fig.170; Michael Milkovich, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci in America, exhibition catalogue, Memphis and Lexington, 1965-1966, p.19, no.32, p.44, fig.43. The drawing is signed with the initials M.R. and measures 410 x 232 mm.
2.
Inv. 48-778; Milkovich, ibid., p.49, no.92, p.54, fig.92 (as Rest on the Flight into Egypt); Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, 1977, Vol.I, p.169, no.513, Vol.II, fig.513; Annalisa Scarpa Sonino, Marco Ricci, Milan, 1991, illustrated p.314, fig.334. The drawing, which is signed Marco Ricci, measures 402 x 342 mm..
3.
Scarpa Sonino, ibid., illustrated p.341, fig.335.
4.
Inv. 1936.1010.14; Scarpa Sonino, op.cit., illustrated p.11. The drawing is signed Marco Ricci and measures 398 x 344 mm.
5.
Inv. 1475; Terisio Pignatti, I grandi disegni italiani nelle collezioni di Venezia, Milan, n.d. (1974?), unpaginated, no.55 (where dated to c.17101720). The drawing measures 153 x 105 mm.
No.39 Francesco Monti 1.
The first known owner of this drawing was the German diplomat and industrialist Richard von Kühlmann (1873-1948), who served as foreign minister towards the end of the First World War.
2.
The German photographer and collector Herbert List (1903-1975) began collecting in the 1950’s, and eventually owned some eight hundred Italian drawings.
3.
Dwight C. Miller, ‘Francesco Monti’, in Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art, London, 1996, Vol.22, pp.26-27.
4.
Mimi Cazort and Catherine Johnston, Bolognese Drawings in North American Collections 1500-1800, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, 1982, p.134.
5.
Inv. 3780-3784, 4160 and 4161. Four of these are illustrated in Mary Cazort Taylor, ‘Some Drawings by Francesco Monti and the Soft Chalk Style’, Master Drawings, Summer 1973, pls.28-31. Two are illustrated in Faietti and Zacchi, ed., op.cit., pp.272-275, nos.90-91, the first of these also illustrated in colour p.223.
6.
London, P. & D. Colnaghi, Old Master Drawings, 1984, no.33; Linda Wolk-Simon, Italian Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, exhibition catalogue, Gainesville and elsewhere, 1991-1993, pp.106-109, no.26. The drawing measures 445 x 305 mm.
7.
Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 27 January 1999, lot 32 (unsold). The drawing measures 423 x 299 mm.
8.
Cazort Taylor, op.cit., pp.161-162.
9.
Cazort Taylor, op.cit., p.162.
No.40 Ubaldo Gandolfi 1.
Bagni, op.cit., pp.628-629, no.602. The Palazzo Malvasia is now part of the University of Bologna.
2.
Inv. 389; Biagi Maino, op.cit., p.34, fig.iii; Bologna, San Giorgio in Poggiale, op.cit., pp.206-207, no.74. The drawing measures 176 x 240 mm.
3.
Bagni, op.cit., p.629, no.603; Florence, Mattia & Maria Novella Romano, op.cit., no.10. The drawing measures 179 x 238 mm.
No.41 Ubaldo Gandolfi 1.
A native of the town of Budrio, just outside Bologna, the cellist and composer Antonio Certani (1879-1952) assembled a fine and varied collection of drawings, mainly of the 17th and 18th century Bolognese and Emilian schools, which included a large number of drawings by each of the Gandolfis. Certani lent almost 150 drawings by 46 artists to the Mostra di Settecento Bolognese, a major exhibition of Emilian art held in Bologna in 1935, for which this drawing was chosen as the cover of the catalogue. The bulk of the Certani collection of drawings, numbering around five thousand sheets, was eventually acquired by Count Vittorio Cini in 1963, and is now in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice.
2.
Prisco Bagni, I Gandolfi: Affreschi dipinti bozzetti disegni, Cittadella, 1992, pp.602-603, nos.573-574, respectively.
3.
Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 29 January 1997, lot 19.
4.
Inv. F.D. 1.309; Manuela B. Mena Marqués, Museo del Prado. Catálogo de Dibujos VII: Dibujos Italianos del Siglo XVIII y del Siglo XIX, Madrid, 1990, p.75, no.F.D. 1.309, illustrated p.291, fig.128.
5.
Inv. F.D. 294; Ibid,, p.76, no.F.D. 294, illustrated p.293, fig.131.
6.
Inv. 7841; Peter Ward-Jackson, Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogues: Italian Drawings II, 17th-18th century, London, 1980, pp.144-145, no.1018 (as Gaetano Gandolfi).
No.42 Gaetano Gandolfi 1.
James Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris, 1983, Vol.I, pp.373-374, under no.379.
2.
Donatella Biagi Maino, ‘Gaetano Gandolfi’s ‘capricci’ of heads: drawings and engeavings’, The Burlington Magazine, June 1994, p.378.
3.
Alexandre de Vesme, Le peintre-graveur italien, Milan, 1906, p.151, no.19 (not illustrated). The etching measures 144 x 100 mm.
4.
Biagi Maino et al., op.cit., 1996, illustrated p.114; Gozzi, op.cit., unpaginated no.10/1. The sheet of seven etchings is an unusual example of a sheet of several printed etchings remaining intact, and not having been cut up into its component etchings.
5.
‘Il disegno, sia per questo carattere preparatorio ma sopratutto per la qualità superba di stesura e invenzione che condivide con il compagno, e’ da ritenere importante acquisizione al catalogo della grafica del Gandolfi.’; Biagi Maino et al., op.cit., 1996, p.112.
6.
‘uno straordinario disegno a penna’; Gozzi, op.cit., unpaginated, under no.10.
7.
Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 26 November 1973, lot 274A (bt. Agnew for 550 gns.); London, Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd., Master Drawings and Prints, 1974, no.36; Hamburg, Dr. Moeller & Cie., op.cit., no.1; Adriano Cera, ed., Disegni, acquarelli, tempere di artisti italiani dal 1770 ca. al 1830 ca., Bologna, 2002, Vol.II, unpaginated, Mauro Gandolfi no.17 (as Mauro Gandolfi). The drawing measures 236 x 136 mm..
8.
Prisco Bagni, I Gandolfi: Affreschi dipinti bozzetti disegni, Cittadella, 1992, p.532, no.501; Donatella Biagi Maino, Gaetano Gandolfi, Turin, 1995, p.354, no.40, fig.40.
9.
Bagni, ibid., p.533, no.502; Biagi Maino, ibid., p.346, no.10, fig.11.
10. Biagi Maino et al., op.cit., 1996, illustrated p.115.
No.43 Giovanni David 1.
Federico Alizeri, Notizie dei professori del disegno in Liguria, Genoa, 1864, Vol.I, p.371.
2.
Two albums containing around 180 drawings by the artist, executed during a trip to France, Belgium and England between September 1785 and October 1786, were at one time in the collection of the 19th century Genoese sculptor Santo Varni and are today in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle; A. P. Oppé, English Drawings: Stuart and Georgian Periods in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, London, 1950, p.40, no.173, figs.16 and 17.
3.
‘il disegno è comunque caratteristico della perizia tecnica e della forza immaginativa dell’artista, capace di creare visioni ricche di personaggi pittoreschi e di nature morte particolareggiate.’; Newcome and Grasso, op.cit., p.52, no.D20.
4.
Inv. 1978-62-2; Mary Newcome, ‘Drawings by Giovanni David’, Master Drawings (Essays in Memory of Jacob Bean), Winter 1993, pp.470471, p.474, fig.4; Giuseppe Pavanello, ‘Asterischi su Giovanni David a Venezia’, Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte, no.23, 1999, p.122, fig.18; Newcome and Grasso, op.cit., pp.50-51, no.D19; Ann Percy and Mimi Cazort, Italian Master Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2004, no.49. The drawing measures 313 x 394 mm.
5.
Carmen Bambach and Nadine Orenstein, Genoa: Drawings and Prints, 1530-1800, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996, p.55, no.61; Cera, ed., op.cit., Vol.I, David no.6; Newcome and Grasso, op.cit., pp.32-33, no.D10; Linda Wolk-Simon and Carmen C. Bambach, An Italian Journey. Drawings from the Tobey Collection: Correggio to Tiepolo, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2010, pp.226-228, no.72. The drawing, which measures 409 x 249 mm., is a promised gift of David and Julie Tobey to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
6.
Mary Newcome, ‘Drawings by Giovanni David’, Master Drawings (Essays in Memory of Jacob Bean), Winter 1993, p.474.
No.44 Pietro Antonio Novelli 1.
‘Regnava sì nel disegno che nelle opere a pennello del Sig. Novelli oltre che un profondo sapere una somma fecondità di fantasia ed io stesso l’ho veduto cambiare in dieci e più maniere un medesimo soggetto.’; G. Avelloni, Documenti intorno agli ultimi anni del Sig. Pietro Antonio Novelli, MS.877.26, Venice, Seminario Patriarcale, p.14.
2.
Inv. M2412, M2413, M2414, M2415 and M2416; Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Les dessins vénitiens des collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, exhibition catalogue, 1990, pp.166-172, nos.88-91.
3.
Inv. 1975.1.388 and 1975.1.389 [Robert Lehman Collection] and 1891.290; James Byam Shaw and George Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection, Vol.VI: Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, pp.78-80, nos.63-64; Jacob Bean and William Griswold, 18th Century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, pp.154-155, no.145.
4.
Inv. 1554, 1554A and 1554B; The first of these is illustrated in Eric Pagliano, de Venise à Palerme: Dessins italiens du musée des beaux-arts d’Orléans XVe-XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 2003, pp.347-348, no.220.
5.
Hugh Macandrew, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings Vol.III, Italian Schools: Supplement, Oxford, 1980, pp.179-180, no.1029A (not illustrated).
6.
Inv. 1965.400.
7.
Inv. 1938.8.2948 to 1938.88.2952.
8.
Anonymous sale, Monte Carlo, Sotheby Parke Bernet Monaco, 5 March 1984, lot 866.
9.
Ixelles, Musée Communal d’Ixelles, De Giorgione à Tiepolo: Dessins italiens du 15e au 18e siècle dans le collections privées et publiques de Belgique, exhibition catalogue, 1993, pp.228-229, no.106 (entry by Guy Grieten and Benoît Boëlens van Waesberghe).
10. Inv. P.M. 2939; Mary Newcome, ‘Drawings by Giovanni David’, Master Drawings, 1993, no.4, p.472, fig.2; Mary Newcome Schleier and Giovanni Grasso, Giovanni David: Pittore e incisore della famiglia Durazzo, Turin, 2003, pp.34-35, no.D11.
No.45 Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo 1.
This drawing was at one time part of an album of more than 160 drawings by Domenico Tiepolo which was sold and dispersed at auction in London in 1965. The cover of the album bore the title ‘DISEGNI A PENA DA CUADRETTI GIO: DOMENICO FIGLIO DI GIO: BATA’: TIEPOLO CON ALCUNI DISEGNI DEL SUDETTO’, while the inside back cover was inscribed in an 18th century hand - possibly that of the artist Francesco Guardi - ‘Questi Disegni Sono no.160. tutti Originali Costa Cechini 15 da Lire 22 L’uno.’ The title page of the album was inscribed ‘162 Dessin de Dominique Tiepolo fils de Jean Baptiste Tiepolo Venetien’ and bore the bookplate of Horace Walpole (1717-1797). Given the French inscription, it has been tentatively suggested that the album may have been given to Walpole, shortly before his death, by his close friend, Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand (1697-1780).
2.
James Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London, 1962, p.34. Since Byam Shaw’s book, further drawings from this group bearing numbers up to 125 have been identified.
3.
Inv. P03007; Michael Levey, Giambattista Tiepolo: His Life and Art, New Haven and London, 1986, p.281, pl.236.
No.46 Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo 1.
James Byam Shaw, ‘The Remaining Frescoes in the Villa Tiepolo at Zianigo’, The Burlington Magazine, November 1959, pp.391-395.
2.
James Byam Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo, London, 1962, p.45.
3.
Inv. 1975.1.528; Ibid., p.82, no.48, pl.48; James Byam Shaw and George Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection, Vol.VI: Italian EighteenthCentury Drawings, New York, 1987, pp.190-191, no.156; Linda Wolk-Simon, Domenico Tiepolo: Drawings, Prints, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1997, p.54, no.83. Three of the monkeys in this drawing are derived, in reverse, from an etching by Stefano della Bella.
4.
Byam Shaw, op.cit., 1962, p.86, no.64, pl.64; Adelheid M. Gealt and George Knox, ed., Giandomenico Tiepolo: Scene di vita quotidiana a Venezia e nella terraferma, Venice, 2005, pp.99-100, no.13 (as location unknown).
5.
George Knox, A Panorama of Tiepolo Drawing, Belgium, 2008, pp.208-209, no.99 (as location unknown). This drawing was reproduced as a hand-coloured etching by Teodoro Viero (Gealt and Knox, ed., op.cit., pp.187 and 192, no.86A, illustrated p.190 [incorrectly as no.86]).
6.
Gealt and Knox, ed., op.cit., pp.96-97, pp.99-102, no.15 (as location unknown).
7.
Aldo Rizzi, The Etchings of the Tiepolos, London, 1971, pp.68-69, no.21. Similar monkeys appear in a handful of other drawings by Domenico Tiepolo, notably a sheet of studies of animals in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Lyon (Inv. 512/1; Lyon, Musée Historique des Tissus, Dessins du XVIe au XIXe siècle de la collection du Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Lyon, exhibition catalogue, 1984-1985, p.52, no.40) and a drawing of a Monkey Swinging on a Parapet, and Two Monkey Skeletons, formerly in the Heinemann collection and now in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York (Inv. 1996.133; Byam Shaw, op.cit., 1962, pp.81-82, no.47, pl.47; Giorgio Marini, ‘Caratteri e dinamiche del disegno tiepolesco’, in Giorgio Marini, Massimo Favilla and Ruggero Rugolo, Tiepolo: I colori del disegno, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 2014-2015, p.37, fig.15). A pen and wash drawing of a seated camel and a monkey holding a dead bird, signed with the artist’s initials, was formerly in the collections of Thomas Fine Howard and William S. Paley in New York (Dario Succi, ‘Disegni di Giandomenico Tiepolo nella collezione Italico Brass’, in Gealt and Knox, ed., op.cit., pp.74-75); the monkey in that drawing is derived from an etching by Johann Elias Ridinger.
No.47 Giuseppe Bernardino Bison 1.
George Knox, in James Byam Shaw and George Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection, Vol.VI: Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, New York, 1987, p.18.
2.
‘andava schizzando or con la penna or con la matita, soggetti vari e capricciosi.’; Giovanni Rossi, ‘Giuseppe Bison’, in Cosmorama Pittorico, 25 May 1845.
3.
Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 9 December 1975, lot 9.
4.
Anonymous sale, Rome, Christie’s, 7 November 1989, lot 134.
No.48 Pietro Fancelli 1.
This drawing may have been part of a large and comprehensive collection of over two hundred drawings by Pietro Fancelli belonging to the Société Historique et Littéraire Polonaise in Paris, which were sold at auction in London in 1972.
2.
Mimi Cazort and Catherine Johnston, Bolognese Drawings in North American Collections 1500-1800, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, 1982, p.152.
3.
Inv. 785; Christel Theim, Disegni di Artisti Bolognesi dal Seicento all’ Ottocento della Collezione Schloss Fachsenfeld e della Graphische Sammlung Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, 1983, pp.166-167, no.100.
No.49 Carlo Bossoli 1.
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 28 November 1990, lot 6.
2.
View of Seville seen from the Guadalquivir River, dated 1858; Anonymous sales, Milford, CT., Shannon’s, 26 April 2007, lot 200 and London, Sotheby’s, 14 November 2007, lot 235.
3.
Market Day in Cadiz; Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 26 October 2005, lot 67.
4.
View of the Escorial; Anonymous sale, Zurich, Schuler Auktionen, 21 June 2002, lot 4788.
5.
A gouache view of Barcelona was in a private collection in Turin in 1974; Lugano, Villa Ciani and Turin, Palazzo Madama, Carlo Bossoli: cinquant’anni di vita europea nei disegni e nei dipinti del pittore ticinese, exhibition catalogue, 1974, p.33, no.123, illustrated.
6.
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 28 November 1990, lots 5-7, respectively.
No.50 Giacinto Gigante 1.
Francis Napier, Notes on Modern Painting in Naples, London, 1853; quoted in Fernanda Capobianco, Giacinto Gigante, Soncino, 1994, p.5.
2.
New York and London, Colnaghi, Master Drawings, 2001, no.44 (incorrectly identified as Pozzuoli from Capo Miseno, with Ischia in the Distance). The drawing measures 378 x 529 mm.
3.
Sergio Ortolani, Giacinto Gigante, Bergamo, 1930, pl.18. The drawing measures 230 x 300 mm and is dated the 12th of August 1850.
4.
Inv. 5199; Nicola Spinosa, La Collezione Angelo Astarita al Museo di Capodimonte, exhibition catalogue, Naples, 1972, p.23, no.51; Luciana Arbace et al, Napoli e la Campania Felix: Acquerelli di Giacinto Gigante, Naples, 1983, p.36, no.52, pl.IX.
5.
Naples, Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes, I colori della campania: Omaggio a Giacinto Gigante, exhibition catalogue, 2006-2007, p.108, pl.88.
6.
Capobianco, op.cit., p.84, fig.60.
No.51 Giovanni (Nino) Costa 1.
Quoted in translation in Norma Broude, The Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century, New Haven and London, 1987, p.213.
2.
London, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art and Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, 2012-2013, no.32. The watercolour measures 405 x 271 mm.
3.
Dario Durbé, ed., Aspetti dell’arte a Roma dal 1870 al 1914, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 1972, p.3, no.7.
No.52 Mosé Bianchi 1.
This drawing was part of a large group of paintings and drawings by Mosé Bianchi purchased from the artist by the brothers Juan (d.1920) and Felix Bernasconi (d.1914). The Bernasconi brothers were prominent Milanese industrialists who formed an impressive collection of works by contemporary Italian painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
2.
Ugo Nebbia, Mosè Bianchi, Busto Arsizio, 1960, unpaginated, illustrated pl.52; Biscottini, op.cit., p.310, no.444 (as location unknown). The painting, which was with the Galleria Carini in Milan in 1960, is signed and dated 1886 and bears a dedication to a friend of the artist. Painted in oil on panel, its dimensions are unknown but Nebbia illustrates it as ‘grandezza naturale’.
No.53 Francesco Paolo Michetti 1.
See Francesco Di Tizio, Francesco Paolo Michetti nella via e nell’arte, Pescara, 2007, for illustrations of portraits of Annunziata from 1878 (p.67), 1881 (p.95) and 1883 (p.125).
2.
Tomaso Silani, Francesco Paolo Michetti, Milan and Rome, 1932, pl.LXI (where dated 1883), as location unknown.
3.
Rome, Palazzo di Venezia, and elsewhere, Francesco Paolo Michetti. Il Cenacolo delle arti: tra fotografia e decorazione, exhibition catalogue, 1999, p.25, no.34, illustrated p.45 and on the cover; Fernando Mazzocca, ‘Il ritratto in Italia dal neoclassicismo al futurismo. Un percorso tra arte e letteratura’, in Francesco Leone et al, da Canova a Modigliani: il volto dell’Ottocento, exhibition catalogue, Padua, 2010-2011, illustrated p.41. The photograph measures 93 x 158 mm.
4.
Silani, op.cit., pl.XXXVIII (where dated to 1870-1880, in the Michetti collection in Francavilla al Mare), pl.L (where dated 1883, as location unknown), and pl.LX (dated 1883, in the Ricci-Oddi collection in Piacenza). The latter is also illustrated in Rome, Palazzo Venezia and Francavilla al Mare, Museo Michetti and Palazzo San Domenico, Francesco Paolo Michetti: Dipinti, pastelli, disegni, exhibition catalogue, 1999, p.148, fig.13.
No.54 Giuseppe Casciaro 1.
‘una straordinaria finezza percettiva e ad una solidita di tocco’; Alfredo Schettini, Giuseppe Casciaro, Naples, 1952, p.22.
2.
‘Un pastello di Casciaro ha del Bach e del Mozart; e talvolta è tragico e profondo, anche, come una commossa voce beethoveniana. Questa eleganza è deliziosa: questo spirito, questo gusto son rari: questa forza piacevole e sicura, non vi opprime ma vi trascina: e la voce di questo adorabile artista ha tutti gli accenti: ha la foga ed il sospiro, l’impeto e la tenerezza, un grido e un sussurro.’
3.
Giovanni Battista de Ferrari, A New Guide of Naples, Its Environs, Procida, Ischia and Capri, Naples, 1852, pp.89-90.
No.55 Giovanni Boldini 1.
Bianca Doria, Giovanni Boldini: Catalogo generale dagli Archivi Boldini, Milan, 2000, Vol.I, no.442, Vol.II, pl.442 (as L’Expertise); Piero Dini and Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931: Catalogo ragionato. Vol.III: Catalogo ragionato della pittura a olio con un’ampia selezione di pastelle e acquerelli, pt.1, Turin, 2002, p.223 no.399; Ann Dumas, ed., Degas e gli italiani a Parigi, exhibition catalogue, Ferrara, 2003, pp.242-243, no.23; Francesca Dini, Fernando Mazzocca and Carlo Sisi, eds., Boldini, exhibition catalogue, Padua, 2005, pp.80-81, no.8; Francesca Dini, ed., Boldini, Helleu, Sem: Protagonisti e miti della Belle Epoque, exhibition catalogue, Castiglioncello, 2006, pp.98-99, no.15. The oil sketch measures 35 x 26.8 cm.
2.
If it is indeed Sargent who is depicted in this oil sketch, it would date the work to before the spring of 1886, when Sargent moved to London.
3.
Inv. 1975.1.278; Piero Dini and Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931: Catalogo ragionato. Vol.I: La vita e l’iter artistico, Turin, 2002, p.255, fig.D28; Richard R. Brettell et al., The Robert Lehman Collection, Vol.IX: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Drawings, New York, 2002, pp.264-265, no.139 (entry by Richard Brettell); Bianca Doria, I disegni di Giovanni Boldini. Catalogo generale: Disegni dagli Archivi Boldini, Bologna, 2011, unpaginated, no.1402. Drawn on a page from a small notebook of graph paper, the drawing measures 169 x 110 mm.
4.
Carlo Ragghianti and Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Boldini, Milan, 1970, p.99, no.102, fig.102; Dini and Dini, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.222-223, no.398 (as location unknown).
5.
Inv. 2625, 2626 (first state) and 2627 (second state); Andrea Buzzoni, Museo Giovanni Boldini: Catalogo generale completamente illustrato, Ferrara, 1997, illustrated p.473; Dini and Dini, op.cit., Vol.III, pp.668-670, nos.1332-1334.
No.56 Giovanni Boldini 1.
‘Our Steel Engravings: The Connoisseur’, Art Journal, 1878, p.217; Quoted in Sarah Lees, ‘Giovanni Boldini in Impressionist Paris’, in Sarah Lees, Giovanni Boldini in Impressionist Paris, exhibition catalogue, Ferrara and Williamstown, 2009-2010, p.19.
2.
The painting is also known as Captain and Mrs. Phillip Lydig Walking in the Bois de Boulogne; Carlo Ragghianti and Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Boldini, Milan, 1970, pp.124-125, no.461a, illustrated in colour pl.LV; Andrea Buzzoni and Marcello Toffanello, Museo Giovanni Boldini: Catalogo generale completamente illustrato, Ferrara, 1997, pp.138-139, illustrated in colour pl.31; Bianca Doria, Giovanni Boldini: Catalogo generale dagli Archivi Boldini, Milan, 2000, Vol.I, no.555, Vol.II, pl.555 (where dated to 1909); Piero Dini and Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931: Catalogo ragionato. Vol.III: Catalogo ragionato della pittura a olio con un’ampia selezione di pastelle e acquerelli, pt.2: Addenda al catalogo ragionato, Turin, 2002, p.511, no.987.
No.57 Giovanni Boldini 1.
Carlo Ragghianti and Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Boldini, Milan, 1970, pp.122-123, no.426, illustrated in colour pl.IL (where dated to 1906); Piero Dini and Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini 1842-1931: Catalogo ragionato. Vol.III: Catalogo ragionato della pittura a olio con un’ampia selezione di pastelle e acquerelli, pt.2: Addenda al catalogo ragionato, Turin, 2002, p.467, no.892. The watercolour measures 450 x 500 mm.
2.
Dini and Dini, op.cit., p.468, no.893. The drawing is signed and dated 1905, and measures 445 x 295 mm.
3.
Ragghianti and Camesasca, op.cit., p.123, no.448, illustrated in colour pl.LIV (where dated 1908); Andrea Buzzoni and Marcello Toffanello, Museo Giovanni Boldini: Catalogo generale completamente illustrato, Ferrara, 1997, p.154, illustrated in colour pl.32; Dini and Dini, op.cit., pp.500-501, no.970. The drawing measures 450 x 450 mm.
4.
Ragghianti and Camesasca, op.cit., p.124, no.460a; Bianca Doria, Giovanni Boldini: Catalogo generale dagli Archivi Boldini, Milan, 2000, Vol.I, no.554, Vol.II, pl.554 (where dated to 1909); Dini and Dini, op.cit., pp.510-511, no.985.
5.
Buzzoni and Toffanello, op.cit., examples illustrated pp.221-222, p.298, p.394, p.402 and p.448.
6.
Vito Doria, Boldini: Inedito / Inédit / Unpublished work, Bologna, 1982, illustrated p.42 (where dated 1884).
7.
Sarah Lees, Giovanni Boldini in Impressionist Paris, exhibition catalogue, Ferrara and Williamstown, 2009-2010, p.19, p.35.
No.58 Vincenzo Gemito 1.
The present sheet was one of a number of works by Vincenzo Gemito in the collection of the Marchese Filippo Eugenio Albani (18681940) and his wife Giulia, née Pignatari. The Marchese and Marchesa Albani lived in a splendid home on the Via Caracciolo in Naples, and were close friends of the artist, who drew a number of portraits of Giulia Albani.
2.
See, for example, a Portrait of a Peasant Woman of 1920 or a Portrait of Anna Maria Panicale of 1922, both on the art market in New York in 2000 (Katherina McArthur and Kate Ganz, Vincenzo Gemito: Drawings & Sculpture in Naples & Rome, New York, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2000, pp.64-65, no.29 and pp.70-71, no.32, respectively).
No.59 Beppe Ciardi 1.
Inv. 8485; Gli Uffizi: Catalogo Generale, Florence, 1979, p.839, no.A222.
2.
‘Accanto alle opere grandi, frutto di elaborazioni pensose, egli raccolse in varii piccoli dipinti, gettati con immediatezza, le sue più spontanee impressioni...Esse hanno tutta la vivacità serena e festosa dell’animo con il quale l’artista si accostava al vero e ne risentiva le suggestioni preziose. Forse in nessun modo è possibile penetrare nelle sue opere più compiute senza passare attraverso queste prove, che non sono notazioni occasionali, ma definizioni di stati d’animo delicati e raccolti, portati alla loro piena conclusione pittorica. E per questo a punto sembra di poter considerare le piccole tavolette ad olio come la parte più grata della sua produzione.’; Milan, Bottega d’Arte Salvetti, Bozzetti ed impressioni di Beppe Ciardi, exhibition catalogue, 1936, unpaginated.
3.
Giorgio Nicodemi, Beppe Ciardi, Milan, 1942, unpaginated (not illustrated). The work is described as ‘Santa Marta. Bozzetto. Olio su tavola largh. cm. 23 alt. cm. 15’.
4.
Milan, Bottega d’Arte Salvetti, op.cit., nos.28 (Case a Santa Marta, 1903), 29 (Una casa a Santa Marta, 1904), 39 and 40 (both Santa Marta).
5.
L’Abbeverata; Sale (‘Dipinti dell’Ottocento Napoletano, provenienti dalla Pinacoteca degli Alberti di Firenze’), Rome, Christie’s, 15 November 1973, lot 339 (not illustrated). A photograph of this oil sketch, which measures 150 x 230 mm., is in the Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
No.60 Giacomo Balla
1.
Piero Pacini, ‘Giacomo Balla’, in Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art, London, 1996, Vol.3, p.115.
2.
Maria Drudi Gambillo and Teresa Fiori, Archivi del futurismo, Rome and Milan, 1986, Vol.II, illustrated p.97, fig.137 (incorrectly as in the Estorick collection). The pastel measures 100 x 150 mm.
3.
Inv. 15; Ibid., illustrated p.97, fig.139 (incorrectly as in the Balla collection in Rome). Measuring 255 x 290 mm, the drawing is signed and dated ‘Futur Balla 1913’.
4.
Hanson, op.cit., p.78, under no.4.
5.
Deborah A. Goldberg, ‘Lydia Winston Malbin, Portrait of a Modern Art Collector’, Womanspeak, 1 May 1986, p.7.
INDEX OF ARTISTS
ALBERTI, Cherubino; no.6 ALLORI, Cristofano [attributed]; no.20
ITALIAN SCHOOL, 16th Century; no.7 LOMI, Aurelio; no.23
BALLA, Giacomo; no.60 BIANCHI, Mosé; no.52 BISON, Giuseppe Bernardino; no.47 BOCCIARDO, Clemente; no.30 BOLDINI, Giovanni; nos.55-57 BOSCOLI, Andrea; no.15 BOSSOLI, Carlo; no.49 CACCIA, Guglielmo, called Moncalvo [attributed]; no.16 CANTAGALLINA, Remigio; no.24 CANUTI, Domenico Maria; no.33 CARRACCI Ludovico; no.12 CASCIARO, Giuseppe; no.54 CASTELLO, Bernardo; no.11 CAVEDONE, Giacomo; no.22 CECCO BRAVO, Francesco Montelatici, called; no.28 CIARDI, Giuseppe (Beppe); no.59 CIGOLI, Ludovico Cardi, called; no.14 CORENZIO, Belisario; no.21 COSTA, Giovanni (Nino); no.51 DAVID, Giovanni; no.43 DELLA BELLA, Stefano; nos.26-27 DE’ PIETRI, Pietro Antonio; no.35 FACCINI, Pietro; nos.17-18 FANCELLI, Pietro; no.48 FLORENTINE SCHOOL, circa 1530; no.2 GANDOLFI, Gaetano; no.42 GANDOLFI, Ubaldo; nos. 40-41 GEMITO, Vincenzo; no. 58 GHIRLANDAIO, Ridolfo di Domenico; no.1 GIGANTE, Giacinto; no.50 GUERCINO, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called; no.29
MARATTA, Carlo; no.34 MICHETTI, Francesco Paolo; no.53 MILANI, Aureliano; no.37 MONCALVO, Guglielmo Caccia, called [attributed]; no.16 MONREALESE, Pietro Novelli, called; no.25 MONTELATICI, Francesco, called Cecco Bravo; no.28 MONTI, Francesco; no.39 NALDINI, Giovanni Battista; no.4 NEAPOLITAN SCHOOL, 17th Century; no.31 NOVELLI, Pietro, called il Monrealese; no.25 NOVELLI, Pietro Antonio; no.44 NUCCI, Avanzino; no.9 PALMA GIOVANE, Jacopo Negretti, called; no.8 PARMIGIANINO, Francesco Maria Mazzola, called [circle of]; no.5 PASSERI, Giuseppe; no.36 PERINO DEL VAGA, Pietro Buonnacorsi, called; no.3 PIETRI, Pietro Antonio de’; no.35 PONTORMO, Jacopo Carucci, called; no.4 RICCI, Marco; no.38 ROMAN SCHOOL, circa 1600; no.10 ROSA, Salvator; no.32 STRADANUS, Jan van der Straet, called; no.13 TIEPOLO, Giovanni Domenico; nos.45-46 TUSCAN SCHOOL, circa 1600; no.19
Carlo Bossoli (1815-1884) The Neptune Fountain and the Paseo del Prado, Madrid No.49
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Back Cover: Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino (1591-1666) A Young Man with an Owl on a Stick No.29
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