A large tree on a rise

The present drawing was sold as part of lot 307 in the Mariette sale. A copy of this drawing by Mariette was included in the same lot: '307 Autre Etude d'un gros Arbre faite de la mme manire [i.e. lot 306, in pen]. Une trs bonne copie de ce dessin faite tromper, par M. Mariette'. The copy was mounted by Mariette and inscribed by him 'Ann. Carracii P.J. MARIETTE 1722' in the cartouche. Mariette executed the copy after the original while it was still in the Crozat's collection. Two years later, while staying at the famous banker's house in the country, Mariette drew a landscape of his own invention which was inscribed 'Dans le Jardins de M. Crozat Motmonrenci.1724'. The following year,Crozat died and Mariette was asked to catalogue the collection. It was at the sale which followed that Mariette bought the Carracci tree study. The copy later found its way in the Saint-Morys collection and was confiscated along with his collection by the revolutionaries. It is now in the Louvre. The history of the present drawing is not known, but the inscription on the mount suggests that it was probably taken to Germany by one of the numerous migrs who fled the revolution in 1791. Mariette often commissioned contemporary artists such as Natoire to execute copies after drawings in his own collections. These were always included in the same lot as the original drawing in his sale in 1775.
There were ten landscapes by Annibale Carracci in the Mariette sale, five of which can be traced today: lot 52 of the Ellesmere sale (Sotheby's London, 11 July 1972) was lot 305 of the Mariette sale, lot 54 was lot 308 and lot 71 was probably part of lot 310. The landscape with bathers, now in an English private collection, was part of lot 309 of the Mariette sale, F. Viatte, op. cit., no. 27.