The Master of the Ghislieri Apse (last quarter of the 16th Century)

ITALIAN 17th CENTURY DRAWINGS FROM THE FERRETTI DI CASTELFERRETTO COLLECTION 'Sometimes the collector comes across a drawing which gives him a sudden rush of feeling, as if the spark of genius that was present at its moment of creation still exists today, a spark that continues to reveal the exceptional skill and power of the artist. This is the drawing that he will be happy to acquire and study.' The Duca Roberto Ferretti's own words, in the introduction to the catalogue of Italian drawings from his collection, held at the Art Gallery of Ontario at Toronto and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York in 1985-6, tell much of his character as a collector. But the duke was too modest to allude to the taste that underlay his passion for drawings or the energy with which he pursued his quarry. The eighty 17th Century Italian drawings from his collection in this sale demonstrate very clearly the artistic qualities to which the duke responds. Many collectors of today have studied art history and collect on the advice of art historians or museum curators. The Duca Ferretti's connoisseurship reflects a longer and more personal tradition. The Ferretti have for several centuries had a prominent place among the families of Ancona; Crivelli's moving Vision of the Beato Gabriele Ferretti, now in the National Gallery, was evidently painted for a member of the family about 1490, and the vast Palazzo Ferretti is now the Museo Archeologico of the city. The duke's special interest in the Marché is represented by drawings of Federico Zuccaro, who after a long and successful Roman career died at Ancona in 1609, and by that genius from Urbino, Federico Barocci, whose art exercised so profound an influence not only in the Marché, but also at Bologna and with the Sienese. The study of the head of the saint for Barocci's great Perdono di San Francesco at Urbino, is balanced by a study for the lost Aeneas and Anchises. Like Zuccaro, Barocci executed a number of major altarpieces for Roman churches. Another accomplished visitor to the city was Cristofano Roncalli, il Pomarancio, whose Two studies of a Head with Eyes closed, related to a fresco cycle of 1599-1601 in the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, seems to lie mid-way between the worlds of Michelangelo and Burne-Jones. It is balanced by a distinguished group of drawings by the Carracci, including Annibale's spirited Adoration of the Shepherds, formerly at Knole. Subsequent Emilian developments are illustrated by Reni's study for the head of the central figure in his Rape of Europa and by Guercino's moving composition drawing for the Risen Christ appearing to his Mother of 1628-30 now in the Pinacoteca Communale at Cento. The selection is notably strong in the great masters of the Roman baroque. Algardi's Design for the Prow of a Galley from the Holkham collection is complemented by a characteristic Bernini sketch. These in turn are matched by a representative group of studies by the protean Pietro da Cortona. Few drawings by the master are more obvious in appeal than the study of the head of a youth which served for that of the angel in the fresco of an Angel and Putti with the Instruments of the Passion of about 1633 in the sacristy of the Chiesa Nuova in Rome. A more dramatic mood is implied by the late composition study of the Conversion of Saint Paul. There is a characteristic example of one of Cortona's most consistent followers, Giacinto Gimignani. The gifted, if neurotic, Andrea Sacchi covers a sheet with a series of apparently random studies; a youth, a negro page boy leaning forward over a parapet, the costume and arms of an inclined priest, a pair of eloquent hands, an arm holding a biretta. All served for the Pope Urban VIII visiting the Gesù (Palazzo Barberini, Rome): the hands are those of the Pope himself, while the youth is apparently Maffeo Barberini. With in addition a landscape by Claude and composition studies of Mola, Maratta and Passeri, the sale offers an unusually complete microcosm of drawing in seicento Rome. Naples in the 17th Century was one of the great cities of Europe. The Ferretti collection is rich in examples of three of the outstanding native masters of the time. Salvator Rosa can be enjoyed at his impulsive best in the double-sided sheet of composition studies of A Port with the Philosopher Crates casting Money into the Sea. This was in the remarkable collection established in the mid-18th Century by John Bouverie, while two equally notable signed 'presentation' drawings, A young Man in a Landscape and A Philosopher in a Landscape, were engraved in 1735, when in the cabinet of the elder Richardson, by Arthur Pond. Rosa was to die in Rome, while his near contemporary Mattia Preti executed his study in red chalk and wash of Aurora in connection with a fresco in the Pamphili palace at Valmontone near Rome. None, however, of the Neapolitans had so peripatetic an existence as Luca Giordano whose Saint Anthony of Padua and Ezzelino was a study for one of the frescoes in the Church of San Antonio de los Portugeses in Madrid on which the artist was at work at the very end of the century. The paragraphs of advice addressed, in Duca Ferretti's 1985-6 catalogue introduction, to those contemplating setting out to collect drawings explain not only why he himself became a collector but also why he wishes that others too may have the opportunity to live with the treasures by which he has set such store. The following lots 1-76, 79-85, 88-93, 95, 97-100, 102-3, 105, 107-113, 115-126, 128, 130-8, 140-2, 144-51, 157, 159-160, 162, 167-171, 174, 180-9, 191, 193-7, 200-2, 204-224, 228-231, 234-240, 243, 246-8, 255, 258-9, 261-3, 268, 273-5, 279-80, 282-3, 286-7, 289-91, 293-4, 296 are sold unframed MORNING SESSION 11:00AM ITALIAN 17th CENTURY DRAWINGS FROM THE FERRETTI DI CASTELFERRETTO COLLECTION

Details

The Master of the Ghislieri Apse (last quarter of the 16th Century)

The Flagellation

black chalk
274 x 166mm.

Provenance

An 18th Century English collector's mark, and attribution 'Andrea Schiavoni'.
Sir Joshua Reynolds (L. 2364), an inscription 'bought at Sr JR sale' on the backing.
A.M. Champernowne (L. 153).
Anon. sale, Christie's, 9 December 1980, lot 6, illustrated, as Corenzio (£1,320).

Literature

J. A. Gere and P. Pouncey, Italian Drawings, Artists working in Rome c. 1550 to c. 1640, London, 1983, I, under nos. 354-7.

Exhibited

Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario and elsewhere, Italian Drawings from the Collection of Duke Roberto Ferretti, 1985-86, no. 25, illustrated (as Belisario Corenzio).

Lot Essay

A pen and ink study of the composition, formerly in the Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia, was sold at Sotheby's, New York, 11 January 1990, lot 48, illustrated. The artist was named by Philip Pouncey on the basis of a design for a chapel with the Ghislieri arms of Pope Pius V (1566-72) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, P. Ward-Jackson, Italian Drawings, Volume One: 14th-16th Century, London, 1979, no. 484, illustrated. Other drawings by this hand are in the Albertina (inv. 608), Munich (inv. 2278, as Marco Pino) in the Louvre (inv. 2980 as Roncalli) and a series of the Four Evangelists in the British Museum, Gere and Pouncey, op. cit., nos. 354-7, pls. 346-7.

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