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Lot Essay
The present sheet was once part of an album (the so-called Shirley Album) of 36 drawings by Carlo Maratti and other artists, assembled in the late 17th Century or early 18th Century. The album included 27 chalk drawings by Maratti, most of them preparatory studies for paintings. The album was acquired by Colnaghi in 1937 and the drawings later sold separately. Works from the Shirley Album are now held in the collections of the Rijksmuseum, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, the Courtauld Gallery, the Fondation Custodia and other institutions.
The study of the child’s head on the recto of this sheet has recently been associated with Maratti’s altarpiece The Martyrdom of Saint Blaise and Saint Sebastian, painted around 1676–1678 for the church of San Carlo ai Catinari in Rome. The painting was, however, never installed there and is now in the church of Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano in Genoa (Rudolph and Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, op. cit., no. 133, ill.).
Comparable drawings of young children by Maratti, similarly executed in red chalk on blue paper, include a sheet in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. 1928-42-4025; A. Percy, ‘Collecting Italian Drawings at Philadelphia: Two Nineteenth-Century Amateurs and a Twentieth-Century Scholar’, in A. Percy and M. Cazort, Italian Master Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2004, pp. 19and 264, ill.) and another study formerly at Holkham in the collection of the Earls of Leicester and today in a French private collection (Rudolph and Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, op. cit., no.118.1, ill.).
On the verso of the present drawing is a study of a penitent saint that can be connected to a small painting of The penitent Saint Peter in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples (inv. Q533; C. Giometti, 'Maratti, Guidi e Passeri. Contaminazioni tra pittura e scultura sul finire del Seicento a Roma', in S. Ebert-Schifferer and S. Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, Maratti e la sua fortuna, atti della giornata di studi, Rome, 2016, p. 140, fig. 10).
The study of the child’s head on the recto of this sheet has recently been associated with Maratti’s altarpiece The Martyrdom of Saint Blaise and Saint Sebastian, painted around 1676–1678 for the church of San Carlo ai Catinari in Rome. The painting was, however, never installed there and is now in the church of Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano in Genoa (Rudolph and Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, op. cit., no. 133, ill.).
Comparable drawings of young children by Maratti, similarly executed in red chalk on blue paper, include a sheet in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. 1928-42-4025; A. Percy, ‘Collecting Italian Drawings at Philadelphia: Two Nineteenth-Century Amateurs and a Twentieth-Century Scholar’, in A. Percy and M. Cazort, Italian Master Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2004, pp. 19and 264, ill.) and another study formerly at Holkham in the collection of the Earls of Leicester and today in a French private collection (Rudolph and Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, op. cit., no.118.1, ill.).
On the verso of the present drawing is a study of a penitent saint that can be connected to a small painting of The penitent Saint Peter in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples (inv. Q533; C. Giometti, 'Maratti, Guidi e Passeri. Contaminazioni tra pittura e scultura sul finire del Seicento a Roma', in S. Ebert-Schifferer and S. Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, Maratti e la sua fortuna, atti della giornata di studi, Rome, 2016, p. 140, fig. 10).