Raffaellino Motta da Reggio (Codemondo, Reggio Emilia 1550-1578 Rome)

Tobias and the Angel

Details

Raffaellino Motta da Reggio (Codemondo, Reggio Emilia 1550-1578 Rome)
Tobias and the Angel
red and black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash
7 5/8 x 6 7/8 in. (19.4 x 17.3 cm)

Provenance

Sebastiano Resta, Milan (1635-1714) (L. 2992a).
Giovanni Matteo Marchetti, Bishop of Arezzo, 1698.
John, Lord Somers (1650-1716) with associated number 'l.96' (L. 2981) ('RAFFAELINO DA REGGIO di Modana mori' giovane / d'anni 28./ Il Lavoro sta in Galleria del Principe Borghese', British Library Ms 802, liber L, no. 96).
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 13 January 1987, lot 2.

Literature

M.S. Bolzoni, 'Recensione a: La linea continua. Disegni antichi dei Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia', Taccuini d'arte. Rivista di Arte e Storia del territorio di Modena e Reggio Emilia, no. 9, 2016, p. 97, fig. 4.

Lot Essay

Still preserved on its original album page annotated by Sebastiano Resta, this sheet is a typical work by Motta, a talented yet short-lived master of late Roman Mannerism. Resta correctly associated this lively study with the artist's only extant panel painting, Tobias and the Angel in the Galleria Borghese (inv. 298). Two other drawings in the Uffizi, both executed in ink over red chalk, like the present one, attest to the development of this painting, possibly his most famous one (M.S. Bolzoni, 'The Drawings of Raffaellino Motta da Reggio', Master Drawings, LIV, 2, 2017, nos. A7, A11, figs. 10, 71).

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