Carlo Innocenzo Carlone

Sale, London, Sotheby’s, 9 July 2003, lot 42;

with W.M. Brady & Co. Inc., New York,

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, not in catalogue;

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. 59 (entry by Suzanne Folds McCullagh)

This large and finely preserved sheet dates to circa 1763, when Carlone was commissioned to paint a pair of monumental altarpieces by a Signor Pollini for the parish church in Calvisano, south of Brescia. The two altarpieces depict The Descent from the Cross¹ and The Baptism of Constantine (fig. 1),² for which the present drawing is a preparatory study.

Although, broadly speaking, the compositions of the final altarpiece and the Nixon drawing are closely comparable, there are a number of differences, most notably the substantial changes in the architectural setting. The evolution of the composition can be further analyzed through the survival of two oil bozzetti. The earlier of these is in a private collection³ and is very similar in composition to our drawing. The second bozzetto, in the collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt,⁴ incorporates the aforementioned architectural changes and therefore must postdate the other related bozzetto, as well as the Nixon drawing.

Connected drawings by Carlone of this scale, quality and condition are immense rarities on the art market with nothing of this importance appearing since this very drawing was last offered over two decades ago.

^1.See A. Barigozzi Brini, Carlo Innocenzo Carloni, Milan 1967, fig. 84

^2.Ibid., fig. 83

^3.See P. Krückmann et al, Carlo Carlone, 1686-1775, Der Ansbacher Auftrag, exhib. cat., Residenz Ansbach, 1990, pp. 170-171, no. 22, reproduced fig. 178

^4.Ibid., no. 23, reproduced fig. 179