Lot Essay
In a letter dated 20 October 1995, Dr. Jörg Merz kindly confirmed the attribution to Cortona and related the drawing to the artist's altarpiece of the same subject for the Franceschi chapel in the church of Santi Michele e Gaetano in Florence, G. Briganti, Pietro da Cortona, Florence, 1962, no. 119, pl. 267.
The drawing is dated by Merz to the beginning of the 1640s, just when the chapel was finished, and is contemporary with Cortona's drawings for the Age of Bronze in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, J. Bean, 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1979, nos. 128-9, illustrated. Baldinucci, in his life of Pietro da Cortona, mentions that in 1636 the artist began to work on a Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence commissioned by Filippo Franceschi for Santi Michele e Gaetano. The work was stopped, according to Baldinucci, by the death of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger and Cortona's sudden departure for Rome. Work on the altarpiece was resumed in 1655.
The drawing is dated by Merz to the beginning of the 1640s, just when the chapel was finished, and is contemporary with Cortona's drawings for the Age of Bronze in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, J. Bean, 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1979, nos. 128-9, illustrated. Baldinucci, in his life of Pietro da Cortona, mentions that in 1636 the artist began to work on a Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence commissioned by Filippo Franceschi for Santi Michele e Gaetano. The work was stopped, according to Baldinucci, by the death of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger and Cortona's sudden departure for Rome. Work on the altarpiece was resumed in 1655.