Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, il Grechetto (1609-1664)

The Nativity

Details

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, il Grechetto (1609-1664)
The Nativity
brush and red-brown paint heightened with white on light brown paper
163/8 x 10¾ in. (416 x 273 mm.)

Provenance

T. Hudson (L. 2432, twice).
B. West (L. 419), his mount and inscription 'The Nativity. Castiglione'; Christie's London, 5 July 1820, lot 112 (as 'One, the Virgin and Child in the manger, in colours Castiglione').
with P. & D. Colnaghi, Old Master Drawings, June, 1968, no. 14, frontispiece.

Lot Essay

Related to the larger unfinished etching, of the same format, of The Virgin and Child adored by Angels (Bartsch XIV, 8; A. Percy, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque, exhib. cat., Philadelphia Museum or Art, 1971, no. E25). The drawing is in the same direction as the print, and differs in some of the details. A drawing related in reverse to the print is in the National Museum, Stockholm, A. Percy, op. cit., no. 48. A studio version of the Stockholm composition is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (J. Bean, 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1979, no. 120).
Ann Percy dates both the print and the Stockholm drawing to the early 1650s.

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