MARCANTONIO BASSETTI (1586-1630)

A prolific and gifted draughtsman, the Veronese artist Bassetti produced numerous monochromatic drawings, executed in a combination of pen and ink, wash, and oil paint on paper. These works seem to have been done not as preparatory studies, but rather as independent works of art. A group of more than fifteen similar oil sketches on paper is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Among them is a sheet of comparable dimensions and almost identical composition depicting the Triumph of Caesar (inv. 6847; A. Blunt and E. Croft-Murray, Venetian Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1957, no. 14).

Another frieze-like drawing featuring a triumphal procession, closely related to the present work, is in a private collection in America (Piai, op. cit., p. 65, ill.).