Saints Blaise and Catherine of Alexandria

Details

Francesco Vanni (Siena 1563-1610)
Saints Blaise and Catherine of Alexandria
with number '23'
black and white chalk, squared in red chalk
8 x 5 in. (204 x 160 mm.)

Provenance

Possibly Padre Sebastiano Resta.
Edward Clive, 1st Earl of Powis (1754-1839) and by descent to
3rd Earl of Plymouth; Christie's, London, 1 July 1986, lot 118.
with Nissman, Abromson & Co., Italian Drawings 1500-1800, New York, 1989, no. 14.

Exhibited

Edinburgh, The Merchants' Hall, Italian 16th Century Drawings from British Private Collections, 1969, no. 88.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections, 1994, no. 101.
Poughkeepsie, The Francis Lehmann Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, and elsewhere, The Katalan Collection of Italian Drawings, 1995-6, no. 28.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium

Lot Essay

This drawing was first attributed to Vanni by Peter Anselm Riedl on comparison with three pen and ink drawings of Saint Cecilia and her husband, Saint Valeriano, crowned by an angel, all of which are in the Uffizi, Florence (P. Riedl, Disegni dei barocceschi Senesi, Florence, 1976, nos. 25-27). Dr Riedl dates the present drawing to circa 1595-1605, and proposed that it might have been a design for a gonfalone, a church banner.
Saint Blaise, bishop of Sebastea in Asia Minor, was martyred by having the skin torn from his body by an iron wool comb.

More from Old Master and 19th Century Drawings

View All