Aureliano Milani

John Barnard (1709-1784), London (L.1419), bears his inscription on the backing sheet: J:B No 865. / 19 1/2 by 11 1/4. /of Bologna, was a Disciple of Pasinelli born 1675,

probably his sale, London, Greenwood, 16-24 February 1787, possibly eighth night’s sale (24 February), lot 3 (as One A. Milani);

W.R. Hubbard, Glasgow(?), in 1892 (according to an inscription on the reverse of the former mount, now lost;

sale, London, Sotheby’s Olympia, 20 April 2004, lot 18;

with Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., London, Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, 2005, no.18;

Private collection, California, in 2005

A. Mazza, ‘Gli artisti di palazzo Fava. Collezionismo e mecenatismo artistico a Bologna alle fine del Seicento’, Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte, no. 27, 2004, p. 355, note 102

The delicate handling of stumped black chalk in the present sheet is a typical feature of Milani’s draughtsmanship, and may be likened to that in a number of large, finished compositional drawings by the artist which exist both as studies for easel pictures as well as independent works in their own right. Such drawings by Milani include a Samson Defeating the Philistines in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa,¹ The Harpies Disrupt the Meal of Aeneas and the Trojans in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna,² and An Old Man Tormented by Demons and Attended by an Angel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.³ All of these are stylistically comparable to the present sheet.

No related painting of this subject by Milani is known, nor is one mentioned in the list of the artist’s works included in Luigi Crespi’s biography.⁴ It is likely, therefore, that this drawing was executed as an autonomous work of art, destined for sale to a collector. This is also suggested by the full signature ‘Io Aureliano Milani F’ at the lower right corner of the sheet.⁵

This fine Abduction of Helen was at one time part of the large collection of drawings and prints assembled by John Barnard (d.1784) over a period of more than fifty years. Numbering around 12,000 sheets, the collection was one of the finest in England at the time (see also lot 102). Barnard generally inscribed the backing of the drawings he owned with his initials, and often added further notes, such as the dimensions of the sheet and brief biographical details about the artist, as with the present example.

^1.Ottawa, National Gallery, inv. no. 23348; Vancouver and elsewhere, Master Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada, exhib. cat., 1988-89, pp. 64-65, no. 17

^2.Bologna, Pinacoteca, inv. no. 4177; Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Artisti italiani dal XVI al XIX secolo: Mostra di 200 disegni dalla raccolta della Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, exhib. cat., 1976-77, p. 35, no. 69, fig. 69

^3.New York, Metropolitan Museum, inv. no. 1993.236

^4.L. Crespi, Vite de pittori Bolognesi..., Rome 1769

^5.An almost identical signature (‘Io Aureliano Milani F. 1726’) is found on a drawing of The Assumption of the Virgin in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. See, 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. 65, fig. XLIX