Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini

Alexander Before the Body of Darius

1702-1703

Italian School, 16th Century Provenance: Private Collection, New York This intriguing drawing is a study by an anonymous 16th-century Italian artist after a vignette in Michelangelo’s fresco of The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. The altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was already richly decorated when Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint his Last Judgment...

Procaccini was born in Bologna, but his family moved to Milan when the artist was eleven years old. His artistic education was evidently familial— from his father Ercole and his elder brothers Camillo and Carlo Antonio, all painters—but his career began as a sculptor, and at an early age: his first known commission, a sculpted saint for the Duomo of Milan, came when he was only seventeen years old. Procaccini’s earliest documented painting, the Pietà for the Church of Santa Maria presso San Celso in Milan, was completed by 1604. By this time the artist had made the trip to Parma recorded by his biographers, where he studied Correggio, Mazzola Bedoli, and especially Parmigianino; reflections of their work are apparent throughout Procaccini's career. As Dr. Hugh Brigstocke has recently indicated, the present oil sketch is preparatory for the figure of the angel seen between the heads of the Virgin and St. Charles Borrommeo in Procaccini's altarpiece in the Church of Santa Afra in Brescia (ill. in Il Seicento Lombardo; Catalogo dei dipinti e delle sculture, exh. cat. Milan 1973, no. 98, pl. 113). As such it is the only known oil sketch of Procaccini's that can be directly connected with an extant altarpiece. The finished canvas, The Virgin and Child with Saints Charles Borrommeo and Latino with Angels, remains in the church for which it was painted; it is one of the most significant works of Procaccini's maturity and is generally dated after the artist's trip to Genoa in 1618. The Head of an Angel is an immediate study, no doubt taken from life, but one stylistically suffused with strong echoes of Correggio and Leonardo. Luigi Lanzi, writing of the completed altarpiece in 1796, specifically commented on Procaccini's indebtedness to Correggio (as well as the expressions of the angels) here: “Di Giulio Cesare...

Provenance: Private Collection, UK After initial training under Justus Suttermans and Vincenzo Dandini, in 1673 Anton Domenico Gabbiani embar...

Provenance: Unidentified collector’s mark “D.G.R,” lower right (Lugt 757b) Wilhelm Suida (1877–1959), New York; by descent to: Robert L. and Bertina Suida Manning, New York, until 1996 Private Collection, USA This impressive drawing of the Assumption of the Virgin is the work of the Genoese artist Giovanni Battista Paggi. The son of a nobleman, Paggi received a humanist education and was a self-taught artist. According to Paggi’s first biographer, Raffaele Soprani, it was only after encountering Luca...

Provenance: Elsie de Woolfe, Lady Mendl, Paris; by whom given in 1950 to: Arlene Dahl, New York (until 2021) Inventive, whimsical, and fantastic; delightful, imaginative, and maca...

Inscribed: 3. una Madonna che va in Egitto, verso, and Madonna che va in Egitto, recto Provenance: Private Collection, UK, since 1999 This expressive and boldly executed drawing is the work of Luca...

'Providenza' Italian School, 18th century ink and wash drawing on paper, framed within a light oak wood frame (behind glass) image size: 10.5 x 7 inches overall framed: 17 x 13 inche...

'Napoli' Italian School, 18th century ink and wash drawing on paper, framed within a light oak wood frame (behind glass) image size: 10.5 x 7 inches overall framed: 17 x 13 inches co...

'Fame' Italian School, 18th century ink and wash drawing on paper, framed within a light oak wood frame (behind glass) image size: 10.5 x 7 inches overall framed: 17 x 13 inches cond...

A lively, well executed sketch painted by a 19th century follower of Francesco Guardi Follower of Francesco Guardi, 19th Century Figures by a Roman Arch Watercolour with ink and sc...

A beautiful 19th century copy by Giuseppe Rocchi of Baldassarre Franceschini's Sleeping Cupid, presented in a very attractive gilt frame with hand carved mouldings. A very peaceful i...

'India' Italian School, 18th century ink and wash drawing on paper, framed within a light oak wood frame (behind glass) image size: 10.5 x 7 inches overall framed: 17 x 13 inches con...