The Nativity

Details

Alessandro Magnasco (Genoa 1667-1749)
The Nativity
with inscription 'Castiglione' and with number '4'
traces of black chalk, brush and brown and grey wash, heightened with white, inscribed arch, on blue paper, unframed
12½ x 7 7/8 in. (31.5 x 19.9 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 6 July 1993, lot 77.

Literature

M. Bona Castellotti (ed.), Alessandro Magnasco: 1667-1749, exhib. cat., Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1996, p. 276, under no. 88.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 20% on the buyer's premium.

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Lot Essay

Related to one of a series of four oil sketches previously in the Bossi Collection, Genoa. The bozzetto of The Nativity is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. 50-4-11), while the three other bozzetti represent The Flight into Egypt (Cleveland, Museum of Art, inv. 48.13), The Visitation (present location unknown) and The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum, inv. 47-93). For further details on the series, which cannot be related to any finished works by Magnasco, see Castellotti (op. cit.).

We are grateful to Dr Mary Newcome Schleier for confirming the attribution to Magnasco on the basis of a photograph.

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