.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This is one of a number of drawings made in connection with copies in the style of miniatures after Old Master paintings, mainly for Charles I. Most of the originals were in the Royal Collection or other collections in England, though this painting by Veronese is only first recorded in Spain, in the Alcazar, in 1686; it is now in the Prado (see T. Pignatti, Veronese, Venice, 1976, no. 325, illustrated pl. 694). The pendant by Veronese, showing The Family of Adam, was however definitely in England at the time, being acquired in 1638 by Basil Fielding, later 2nd Earl of Denbigh, nephew of Oliver's patron the Duke of Buckingham (Pignatti, op.cit, no. 326).
The colour notes on the back, which seem to correspond with the appropriate areas of the composition on the front of the paper, include 'Fayer' for the flesh of the mother and child; 'whit' and 'yelow' for the child's clothes; 'smalt', 'laek' (lake) and 'whit glasd' for her clothes; 'brown' and 'yelowish' for the rocks behind the figures; 'bron' for Cain's back, and 'whitish', 'br' and 'of a lyte bron' for his animal pelt; and 'laik' and 'whit' for the sky. These were presumably to act as guidance for the finished miniature.
(For a similar copy by Peter Oliver after Titian's Venus and Adonis see L. Stainton and C. White, Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth, exhibition catalogue , London, British Museum, and New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, 1987, p. 78, no. 37, illustrated; see also J. Murdoch et al, The English Miniature, exhibition catalogue, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1981, p. 92, colour illustrations, pl. 18 a and b).
The colour notes on the back, which seem to correspond with the appropriate areas of the composition on the front of the paper, include 'Fayer' for the flesh of the mother and child; 'whit' and 'yelow' for the child's clothes; 'smalt', 'laek' (lake) and 'whit glasd' for her clothes; 'brown' and 'yelowish' for the rocks behind the figures; 'bron' for Cain's back, and 'whitish', 'br' and 'of a lyte bron' for his animal pelt; and 'laik' and 'whit' for the sky. These were presumably to act as guidance for the finished miniature.
(For a similar copy by Peter Oliver after Titian's Venus and Adonis see L. Stainton and C. White, Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth, exhibition catalogue , London, British Museum, and New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, 1987, p. 78, no. 37, illustrated; see also J. Murdoch et al, The English Miniature, exhibition catalogue, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1981, p. 92, colour illustrations, pl. 18 a and b).