Lorenzo Garbieri (1580-1654)

Juno unloosing the Winds, with Neptune and a vessel below

Details

Lorenzo Garbieri (1580-1654)
Garbieri, L.
Juno unloosing the Winds, with Neptune and a vessel below
with inscription 'Garbiari Ecole de Bologne' on the mount (verso)
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white on brown paper, oval, made up at the edges, varnished
20 x 15 in. (5215 x 380 mm.)

Provenance

P.-J. Mariette, part of his mount; Paris, Basan, 15 November 1775 - 30 January 1776, lot 422 (Les quatres Elments, reprsents en un mme Sujet, de forme ovale, d'une belle composition & d'un grand effet, peint au bistre, rehauss de blanc, sur papier, 41 livres 19 sols).
Sir Thomas Lawrence (L. 2445).
Lord Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, thence by descent; Christie's London, 9 December 1980, lot 25.
Anon. sale, Paris, 14 March 1990, lot 55.

Literature

M. Cazort and C. Johnston, Bolognese Drawings in North American Collections 1500-1800, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1982, p. 90.
A. Brogi, 'Lorenzo Garbieri: un "incomminato" fra romanzo sacro e romanzo nero', Paragone, May 1989, XL, pp. 5-6, pl. 7.
A. Brogi in Disegni emiliani del Sei - Settecento, Milan, 1991, p. 90.

Lot Essay

The strong white heightening against a dark background is typical of drawings by Ludovico Carracci and his school. A drawing by Garbieri comparable in technique is in the Louvre, A. Brogi, op. cit., 1991, no. 20. The striking composition of the drawing is close to that of a sheet also from the Mariette sale (part of lot 423) that represents Le Temps qui lve le Gnie par la Vigilance, A. Brogi, op. cit., 1989, pl. 6.
The present drawing was entitled Les quatres Elments in the Mariette sale, although the subject may be Juno unloosing the Winds. Juno took the side of the Greeks in the Trojan War and when Aeneas had to flee from Troy she asked the Winds to provoke a great storm to sink his ships. Neptune, angered by the storm, calmed the waves. The ship next to Neptune in the lower part of the drawing is probably that of the Trojans.