Donato Creti

Sale, London, Sotheby's 2 July 1990, lot 141;

sale, Milan, Finarte, Dipinti e Disegni Antichi, 31 May 1994, lot 170;

with Galerie Eric Coatalem, Paris;

Jeffrey E. Horvitz, Boston (acquired in 1998), his sale, New York, Sotheby's, Jeffrey E. Horvitz Collection of Italian Drawings, 23 January 2008, lot 70;

with W. M. Brady & Co., New York;

with Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel, London and Münich,

where acquired by the present owner in 2010

R. Roli, ‘Donato Creti (1671-1749)’, Arte antica e moderna, 7, 1959, reproduced pl. 149b

R. Roli, Donato Creti, Milan 1967, p. 60, note 46

M. Riccomini, Donato Creti, Le opere su carta. Catalogo ragionato, Turin 2012, pp. 29-30, no. 14.1, reproduced fig. 14.1

Elegantly finished drawings of this type, depicting groups of figures in landscapes, are characteristic of Creti's pen style (see also lot 144).  Although they can occasionally be related to paintings, most seem to have been executed as independent works of art. Comparable examples are at Windsor, the Courtauld Institute, the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, and the Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.¹ In her catalogue of the Bolognese drawings at Budapest, Andrea Czére presents the most illuminating discussion of the group, saying that these works seem to originate from the commission given to Creti in 1711 by Count Marsili, to paint a series of nocturnal astronomical subjects. She believes that the landscapes with figures followed in the subsequent decade and that they are a kind of Rococo idyll comparable to the work of French artists such as Watteau, but also owing a debt to the Emilian tradition.

Marco Riccomini has proposed a dating after 1715, to the artist's mature period.

^1.Respectively: O. Kurz, Bolognese Drawings...at Windsor, London 1955, no. 196, pl. 32; C. Johnston, Il seicento e il settecento a Bologna, Milan 1971, p. 87, pl. XXXV; R. Roli, Donato Creti, Milan 1967, figs. 123, 124; A. Czére, Disegni di Artisti Bolognesi...di Budapest, Bologna 1989, p. 146, no. 71