Francesco Curia

William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-1894), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L.2643);

Ratjen Foundation, Vaduz;

with Flavia Ormond Fine Arts Ltd., London, Old Master Drawings, 1500-1800, 1997, no. 4,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 27 (entry by Rhoda Eitel-Porter);

Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Ritorno al Barocco, da Caravaggio a Vanvitelli, 2009, vol. II, p. 50, cat. 3.0, reproduced (recto and verso), (entry by Rossana Muzii);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 29

I. Di Majo, Francesco Curia: l’opera completa, Naples 2002, p. 94 and p. 178, no. D 99

This finely preserved sheet by the Neapolitan artist Francesco Curia is a characteristic example of his draftsmanship and both recto and verso can be connected with important surviving paintings by the artist. The recto, which features Curia's distinctive and beautiful application of mauve wash, can be associated with his painting of the Archangel Gabriel Descending with a Blazing Crown in the nave of the church of Santa Maria la Nova, in Naples, which dates to 1598-1602.¹ The verso was identified by Eitel-Porter (see Exhibited) as preparatory for Curia's most famous painting, the Annunciation of the Virgin. Commissioned by Giovan Francesco Orefice, Bishop of Averno, in 1596 for the altarpiece of his family chapel in Santa Maria di Monteoliveto, Naples; this painting, such a quintessential example of the late mannerist style in Italy, is now in the Museo Nazionale di Capidimonte, Naples.²

^1.Di Majo, op. cit., p. 111

^2.Ibid., pp. 42, 131-132, no. 9