Giovanni Balducci, called Il Cosci

With Thomas Williams Fine Art Ltd., London,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007 (not in catalogue)

Balducci was the most talented pupil of Giovanni Battista Naldini (1537-1591), with whom he frequently collaborated. In this drawing, executed mainly in pen and brown ink with abundant wash, and skilfully heightened with white, he clearly shows his debt to the style of his master, whose own early apprenticeship was with Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1557), a great believer of the centrality of 'Disegno', the most noble of the arts. Artists such as Balducci perpetuated this strong emphasis upon drawing, cultivated in the Florentine tradition and centered in the belief that Disegno was the unifying force of the different arts.

A finished composition, the present sheet must be a modello for a lost painting. The scene is crowded with figures and completed by a group of classical buildings in the background, from which some onlookers follow the events from a balcony. Balducci was active in a number of important commissions in Florence. In 1579 he assisted Federico Zuccaro (1540/41-1609) with the completion of the frescoes in the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. He subsequently moved to Rome, at the invitation of Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici, and shortly after he travelled to Naples, where he worked successfully for about thirty years.