Lot Essay
The inscription 'Solis' refers to the collector Francesco de Solis (1620-1684), who lived in Madrid. Six more drawings which bear that inscription are known: four in Copenhagen (photographs in the Turcic archives), another formerly in Milan (published by Mary Newcome in Semino, Antologia di Belli Arti, VI, 1978, p. 98, fig. 14) and another by Ribera in the Prado, A.E. Pèrez Sànchez, Dessins Espagnols Maîtres des XVIe et XVIIe Siècles, exhib. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1991, no. 130, illustrated.
Stylistically the drawing can be dated to the 1580s, a decade in which no picture by Tavarone is known, neither in Madrid, nor in the Escorial where he stayed with Cambiaso until 1591. Cambiaso painted a Last Supper in the 1580s and it would not be impossible that Tavarone took part in that commission. There are only few differences between the composition of that picture, now in the Academia Ligustica, and the present drawing, B. Suida Manning and W. Suida, Luca Cambiaso, Milan, 1958, fig. 400.
We are grateful to Mary Newcome for her help in cataloguing the present lot.
Stylistically the drawing can be dated to the 1580s, a decade in which no picture by Tavarone is known, neither in Madrid, nor in the Escorial where he stayed with Cambiaso until 1591. Cambiaso painted a Last Supper in the 1580s and it would not be impossible that Tavarone took part in that commission. There are only few differences between the composition of that picture, now in the Academia Ligustica, and the present drawing, B. Suida Manning and W. Suida, Luca Cambiaso, Milan, 1958, fig. 400.
We are grateful to Mary Newcome for her help in cataloguing the present lot.