Attributed to Agostino Carracci

‘Collection R.’ (according to the 1929 de Vries catalogue);

with R.W.P. de Vries, Amsterdam, Dessins de Maîtres Anciens et Modernes, No.2, 1929, no. 118 (as Paolo Veronese);

with William H. Schab Gallery, New York, Master Drawings & Prints 1500-1960, April 1970, no. 157 (as Paolo Veronese);

Ian Woodner (1903-1990), New York, by 1971,

by whose heirs sold, London, Christie’s, 2 July 1991, lot 96 (as attributed to Agostino Carracci).

‘Art Across the U.S.A.: Outstanding Exhibitions’, (review of Birmingham/Montgomery exhibition), Apollo, April 1973, p. 433, fig. 5 (as Veronese);

R. Cocke, Veronese’s Drawings, with a Catalogue Raisonné, Ithaca 1984, p. 363, no. 198 (under rejected drawings)

New York, William H. Schab Gallery; Los Angeles County Museum; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Woodner Collection I: A Selection of Old Master Drawings before 1700, 1971-1972, no. 33 (as Veronese);

Birmingham (AL), Birmingham Museum of Art; Montgomery (AL), Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Veronese & His Studio in North American Collections, 1972, reproduced p. 47 (as Veronese).

The attribution to Agostino Carracci was first suggested by David Lachenmann in 1991 when this sheet, formerly in the Woodner Collection, came to the art market (see Provenance). Stylistic comparisons may be made with some of Agostino’s studies of the early and mid-1590s, such as a drawing for the figure of Christ in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum in Budapest,¹ in which the treatment of hands and draperies are very similar. Lachenmann noted that the treatment of the head is comparable to that in a drawing by Agostino Carracci of Pluto in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.²

The handling of chalk and the use of blue paper in these drawings may reflect Agostino’s exposure to the Venetian tradition of draughtsmanship, the result of a number of visits made to Venice in the 1580s. As Nicholas Turner has noted, ‘The technique of black and white chalks on a slightly greenish, light blue-gray paper, a favorite of Agostino’s for many years, reveals the impact on him of the drawings in the same medium, on similarly coloured paper, by the great Venetian, Paolo Veronese. When Agostino first visited Venice in 1582, he was impressed by contemporary Venetian painting, especially the work of Veronese. On his return to Bologna, a strong “Venetianism” remained evident in his work, especially his drawings’.³

It is also interesting to note that the traditional attribution of the present sheet was to Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647), who served an apprenticeship with Agostino Carracci.

^1.Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, inv. no. 1863; Andrea Czére, Disegni di artisti bolognesi nel museo delle belle arti di Budapest, exhib. cat., Bologna, 1989, pp. 40-41, no. 16

^2.Windsor Castle, Royal Library, RCIN 902364; Clare Robertson and Catherine Whistler, Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections, exhib. cat., Oxford and London, 1996-1997, pp. 78-79, no. 35

^3.Nicholas Turner, The J. Paul Getty Museum; European Drawings 4: Catalogue of the Collections, Los Angeles, 2001, p. 31, under no. 11