Attributed to Giovanni Battista Ruggeri

Commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657), Rome (bears numbering 3, 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 250 (as Italian School, 17th century);

Dr Jerome M. Eisenberg (1930-2022), 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. 755-6, no. 490

This drawing of an antique relief showing a Dioscorus and a horse was commissioned or acquired by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) for his ‘Museo Cartaceo’, likely during the 1630s. The relief was possibly in the dal Pozzo collection at the time. The drawing is one of thirteen sheets recorded by Claridge and Dodero in their catalogue raisonné of the sarcophagi and other reliefs in the dal Pozzo collection attributable to the same distinctive hand. These drawings bear a strong stylistic relationship to the work of Giovanni Battista Ruggeri and are characterised by softly rounded and rather melancholy facial expressions, finished in several tones of grey and greyish-brown wash with white heightening.

Ruggeri was born in Bologna and studied under Domenichino and Francesco Gessi, before moving to Rome in the late 1620s. In November 1632, he was paid for 20 drawings of statues and bas-reliefs for the Galleria Giustiniana. He died on 23 September 1633, probably without completing all the bas-reliefs, for which Pietro Testa may then have been brought in to replace him. Baglione also reports that he was commissioned to have ‘drawn many things for Vincenzo Giustiniani and portrayed other ancient works for the Cavalier Cassiano dal Pozzo'.

It remains unclear exactly when these works were drawn and whether they were dal Pozzo commissions or acquisitions, but they are all in ‘type A’ dal Pozzo mounts, which indicates that they were acquired by 1635-8, and have sequential 'Pozzo' numbers, suggesting they were once kept together.

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 youthful male nude, wearing a chlamys pinned at his right shoulder and a pileus-type cap, is recognisably one of the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, twin sons of Jupiter and Leda. The divine horsemen were especially popular at Rome among the equestrian order for their equine and martial associations and for their reputation as participants in legendary expeditions such as the voyage of the Argo and the hunt of the Calydonian Boar. The figure’s right hand was holding the reins of the horse that appears in the background; his left held a spear. On Roman sarcophagus reliefs, the Dioscuri came to symbolize immortality and salvation. 

The relief itself is now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, having been acquired on the Rome art market in 1909. It has a companion depicting the god Jupiter, of the same dimensions and the same type of marble and style, acquired in Rome in 1897. The two might have been sawn from two sides of the same altar. The Jupiter relief was also drawn for the Paper Museum by the Codex Ursinianus Copyist in the 1620s and again by Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi in the 1650s. This relief is known to have been in the dal Pozzo collection, at least in the later 17th century, but whether the relief drawn here was also in the dal Pozzo collection or their later coincidence in Berlin was entirely fortuitous is unknown.

See also lot xxx