THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN 
Parrasio Micheli (active 1547-d. 1578)

Two Girls and a Youth making Music

Details
Parrasio Micheli (active 1547-d. 1578)
Two Girls and a Youth making Music
oil on canvas, unframed
41 5/8 x 39 1/8in. (105.7 x 99.5cm.)
Provenance
J.W. Ellsworth, Chicago.
The Art Institute of Chicago, 1920.
Anon. (A Mid-Western Educational Institution) Sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, 4 May 1944, lot 63 ($400).
Anon. Sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, 12 Nov. 1952, lot 22 ($225).
Anon. Sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 22 Jan. 1976, lot 19 ($2,500).
Literature
Detlev, Baron von Hadeln, Parrasio Michieli, Apollo, 7, Jan. 1928, p. 20.
A. Pigler, Katalog der Galerie Alter Meister, Budapest, 1967,
p. 445.
Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei Pittori e degli Incisori Italiani dall' XI al XX secolo, VII, Turin, 1975, p. 380.
E.A. Safarik, Catalogo Sommario della Galleria Colonna in Roma: Dipinti, Busto Arsizio, 1981, pp. 91-2.
V. Tátrai in Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Old Masters' Gallery, A Summary Catalogue of Italian, French, Spanish and Greek Paintings,
ed. V. Tátrai, London and Budapest, 1991, p. 78.

Lot Essay

In a variant at Schwerin, a portrait of a youth takes the place of the girl playing the organ on the left (von Hadeln, op. cit., p. 19,
fig. IV). The central figure was also used in a composition in which she is accompanied only by a (different) putto holding a musical score; four versions are known, at Budapest (Catalogue, 1991,
loc. cit., illustrated), offered at Sotheby's, New York,
19 May 1994, lot 26, in the Galleria Colonna, Rome (Safarik,
loc. cit., no. 119, illustrated, as a copy) and offered at Christie's, Rome, 16 November 1987, lot 132 (as Pietro Damini).

The present picture was attributed to Domenico Brusasorci, to whom Berenson had attributed the variant at Budapest (B. Berenson, North Italian Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London, 1907,
p. 177), until von Hadeln recognized it as the work of Micheli.

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