Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619)

Details
Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619)

The Return from Egypt, with Angels

red chalk, pen and brown ink, brown and grey wash heightened with white on light grey paper
185 x 154mm.
Provenance
Chatsworth, no. 417.
The Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement; Christie's, 3 July 1984, lot 10, illustrated (£8,640).
Literature
H. Bodmer, Lodovico Carracci, Burg bei Magdeburg, 1939, p. 148, no. 11.
B. Bohn, Lodovico's last Decade, Master Drawings, 1987, XXV, pp. 222-3, no. 9.
M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings, Bolognese and Italian Schools, London, 1994, no. 525, illustrated.
Exhibited
Bologna, Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio, Mostra dei Carracci, 1956, no. 38, fig. 14.
Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario and elsewhere, Italian Drawings from the Collection of Duke Roberto Ferretti, 1985-86, no. 27, illustrated.

Lot Essay

This drawing is dated by Dr. Babette Bohn to circa 1611-2, although she adds that the drawing 'is reminiscent of Ludovico's freely washed works of the early 1590s', op. cit., p. 222. Characteristic of this period are the facial types, the draperies and 'the compression of the figures into a small area'. The drawing was respectively dated by Rudolf Wittkower and Sir Denis Mahon to circa 1600-10 and circa 1610.
The composition is close to that of a print by Francesco Brizio engraved after a drawing by Ludovico, Toronto, loc. cit., p. 66.
The shape in which the present drawing is inscribed leads David McTavish to think that it was originally drawn for a specific commission and possibly for a fresco.

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