Lot Essay
This drawing is related to Annibale's lost picture of the Adoration of the Shepherds of 1606, known through a copy by Domenichino in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (fig. 1), D. DeGrazia Bohlin, Prints and related Drawings by the Carracci Family, A Catalogue Raisonné, Washington, 1979, fig. 22c. A drawing in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (DeGrazia Bohlin, op. cit., fig. 22b), shows the same figure of the shepherd blowing pipes as in this drawing and the Domenichino copy.
Of the same subject and format as the present drawing is a sheet at Windsor Castle preparatory for a print dated by Sir Denis Mahon and Rudolf Wittkower to 1605-6; just before the lost picture, DeGrazia Bohlin, op. cit., fig. 22a and no. 22. A feature shared by both the Ferretti drawing and the print is a prominent wooden post, present in the middle ground of the former and in the foreground of the latter. In both drawings, Christ turns His head towards the post as if He were looking at the cross on which He will be crucified.
The alternative solution of the right side of the Ferretti drawing, attached on the left side of the drawing, is similar to the right side of the print: shepherds, with sheep, coming to see the Child. The right side of the present drawing, though, is closer to the picture than to the print: young shepherds kneeling in front of the Child. The present drawing may then be a discarded idea for the print that Annibale later used for the picture. The Pierpont Morgan Library drawing on which the shepherd blowing pipes appears, is dated by Donald Posner to 1606, and shows the Virgin in a pose closer to that in the picture than to that in the print. It must therefore have been executed at some point between the present drawing and the picture.
The drawing was executed on the verso of the print Christ of Caprarola by Annibale, dated 1597.
Of the same subject and format as the present drawing is a sheet at Windsor Castle preparatory for a print dated by Sir Denis Mahon and Rudolf Wittkower to 1605-6; just before the lost picture, DeGrazia Bohlin, op. cit., fig. 22a and no. 22. A feature shared by both the Ferretti drawing and the print is a prominent wooden post, present in the middle ground of the former and in the foreground of the latter. In both drawings, Christ turns His head towards the post as if He were looking at the cross on which He will be crucified.
The alternative solution of the right side of the Ferretti drawing, attached on the left side of the drawing, is similar to the right side of the print: shepherds, with sheep, coming to see the Child. The right side of the present drawing, though, is closer to the picture than to the print: young shepherds kneeling in front of the Child. The present drawing may then be a discarded idea for the print that Annibale later used for the picture. The Pierpont Morgan Library drawing on which the shepherd blowing pipes appears, is dated by Donald Posner to 1606, and shows the Virgin in a pose closer to that in the picture than to that in the print. It must therefore have been executed at some point between the present drawing and the picture.
The drawing was executed on the verso of the print Christ of Caprarola by Annibale, dated 1597.