The Birth of the Virgin

Details

Domenico Mona (Ferrara 1550-1602 Parma)
The Birth of the Virgin
with inscription ‘Tintoretto.’ (on the recto of the mount)
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash on two joined sheets of blue paper
16 ¾ x 13 5/8 in. (39.8 x 34.5 cm)

Provenance

Unidentified collector’s mark (‘Pseudo-Crozat’) (L. 474), with associated shelfmark ‘3. D. L. 23’ (on the verso of the mount).
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, New York, 30 January 1997, lot 32.
Edith Mitchell, New York (according to the Landolt typescript catalogue).
with Peter Bader, Lucerne, 2001, from whom acquired by Robert Landolt.

Literature

Zurich, Graphische Sammlung ETH, Zwiegespräch mit Zeichnungen. Werke des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts aus der Sammlung Robert Landolt, 2013-2014, no. 19, ill. (catalogue entry by M. Matile).

Special notice

These lots have been imported from outside the EU or, if the UK has withdrawn from the EU without an agreed transition deal, from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

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Stijn Alsteens

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Lot Essay

First recognized as a drawing by Domenico Mona by Philip Pouncey, this is one of the very few securely attributed sheets by the Ferrarese artist. As observed by Pouncey, it is a study for one of the monumental pictures in the choir of Santa Maria in Vado in Ferrara, generally considered one of the artist’s most important pictures (see M. Matile, 'Quadri laterali' im sakralen Kontext. Studien und Materialien zur Historienmalerei in venezianischen Kirchen und Kapellen des Cinquecento, Munich, 1997, pp. 156-157, figs. 196-197). Mona received the commission for the painting in 1581 and it was installed the following year. Responding to the large space reserved for the painting, Mona has extended the sheet by a third at the top allowing him to prepare the picture for this format. Despite the fact that the artist is not known to have worked in Venice (Mona was a pupil of the Ferrarese painter Giuseppe Mazzuoli), the style and technique of the present drawing seem to reveal a strong Venetian influence, and particularly that of Jacopo Tintoretto, explaining the early attribution of the drawing.

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