Vincenzo Leonardi

Commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657), Rome (bears numbering 273, and on ‘Type A’ mount of the Museo cartaceo),

Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo (1606-1689), Rome,

thence by descent to Cosimo Antonio dal Pozzo (1684-1740), Rome;

Pope Clement XI (1649-1721), the Vatican, acquired in 1703;

Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692-1779), Rome;

King George IlI (1738-1820), London, acquired through James Adam in 1762;

Richard Dalton (1715-1791), London;

John MacGowan (d. 1803), Edinburgh, acquired in 1791;

Charles Townley (1737-1805), London, acquired in 1804,

John Townley;

Sir William Stirling Maxwell (1818-1878), Dunblane, acquired in 1865,

thence by descent;

sale, London, Phillips, 12 December 1990, Lot 241 (as Italian School, 17th century);

with Royal Athena Gallery, New York;

Private collection, New York

A. Claridge and E. Dodero, Sarcophagi and Other Reliefs, 4 vols, Part III-2, The Paper Museum of Cassiano Dal Pozzo. Series A: Antiquities and Architecture, London 2022, pp. 616-7, no. 375

This drawing of two women is copied from a Greek grave relief in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. It was commissioned from Vincenzo Leonardi by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) in the early 1640s, for his ‘Museo Cartaceo’. The drawings of the Museo Cartaceo later passed through the collections of Pope Clement XI, his nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani and King George III. The drawings belonged to George IIl's library in Buckingham House before they were reorganized by the Royal Librarian, Richard Dalton, who kept a number of albums for himself, and thus certain drawings re-entered the market. The present drawing comes from one such album which was acquired at Dalton’s sale by the Scottish lawyer John MacGowan, from whose sale the album was subsequently purchased by the collector Charles Townley. At the sale of Townley’s descendant, John Townley, the album was acquired by the antiquary Sir William Stirling-Maxwell and subsequently dispersed by his descendants at auction in London on 12 December 1990 (see Provenance).

Beginning in 1615, Cassiano dal Pozzo and his brother Carlo Antonio assembled one of the most celebrated European collections of the 17th century. The collection of over 7,000 drawings which formed the ‘Museo Cartaceo’, or ‘Paper Museum’, provided a systematic record of classical antiquities and archaeological objects, as well as architecture, maps, fashion and portraiture and drawings of a natural historic and scientific nature, including botanicals, particularly citrus fruits.

Dal Pozzo hired artists newly arrived in Rome who had not yet made their reputations to produce these drawings. His early patronage of Pietro Testa and Nicolas Poussin, whom he befriended, was prescient. He also employed François Duquesnoy, Giovanni Battista Ruggeri and Bernardino Campitelli. In addition to the drawings he commissioned, dal Pozzo also collected drawings of relevant subjects by old masters.

The relief shown here is a genuine Greek grave stele of the Classical period, probably from Ionia (western Turkey), showing two women, the deceased on the right, seated on an elegant chair with a footstool, dressed in chiton and himation, which is pulled up over her head as a veil, holding a spindle in her right hand. She is looking up at a standing female in similar costume, also veiled, who is either her daughter or another close relative.

The relief depicted, which is now set in the wall of the main staircase of Palazzo Barberini at Quattro Fontane, corresponds closely in dimensions and description to one purchased by the Barberini from the sculptor Matteo Bonicelli for 25 scudi on 2 May 1643.¹ The head on the left, restored by Gioseppe Giorgetti in 1669, is not as shown in the present drawing, which either reflects an earlier restoration or a restoration on paper by the artist. The antiquarian interest of the fragment for the Paper Museum could have been simply the costume, chair, footstool and spindle. The same relief was drawn in its restored state by Jacques-Louis David, circa 1775-80.

Vincenzo Leonardi was a Roman-born artist who studied under Antonio Tempesta and loyally served Cassiano dal Pozzo for some 25 years. His first Cassiano commission, received during the 1630s, led him to specialize in natural history illustration, and his many drawings of citrus fruits were later engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert, for inclusion in Giovanni Battista Ferrari's important publication, Hesperides. In 1641-4 Leonardi was re-engaged by Cassiano, this time to draw antiquities.

At least 91 of these drawings, all in ‘type B' mounts, can be attributed to his hand. They are inscribed with the dal Pozzo numbers running from 38 to 372, which are indicative of accessions between 1639 and 1646. Of these 91 drawings, 54 are catalogued by Claridge and Dodero in their catalogue raisonné of the sarcophagi and other reliefs in the Cassiano dal Pozzo collection.

^1.M. Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art, New York 1975, p. 127, no. 92