Donato Creti (1671-1749)

Details

Donato Creti (1671-1749)

The sleeping Cupid and Pan playing Pipes: Designs for an Oval

with inscriptions '10 Agosto 1693. Donato Creti. f.'; pen and brown ink, watermark Medici arms
7¾ x 11¼in. (197 x 286mm.)

Provenance

Count Fava.
Anon. sale, Klipstein & Kornfeld, Berne, June 1960, lot 62.

Literature

R. Roli, Drawings by Donato Creti: Notes for a Chronology, Master Drawings, XI, 1973, p. 26, note 6, pl. 9.
H. Joachim and S. Folds McCullagh, Italian Drawings in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1979, under no. 96.

Exhibited

Institute of Fine Arts, 1961.
Vassar College, 1963, no. 32.
Duke University, 1966, no. 26.

Lot Essay

Renato Roli points out that the inscription on the present drawing is in the hand of Count Fava, and presumably indicates the date of purchase. A similar inscription, dated the same day, appears on the Praying Saint in the Cini Foundation, R. Roli, Donato Creti, Milan, 1967, fig. 106. Renato Roli describes the present drawing's 'immediacy of expression' and adds that is 'is so full of Venetian atmospheric suggestiveness, that it is to be considered one of the most intense achievements of the master's graphic art, together with the drawing of Armida about to transfix Rinaldo in the Chicago Art Institute', Joachim and McCullagh, op. cit., no. 96, pl. 105.