拍品专文
Professor Ann Sutherland Harris has kindly confirmed the attribution. The drawing is a preparatory study for the fresco commissioned in 1672 in the Gesù, Rome by Gaulli following designs by Bernini. This is one of a number of similar sheets related to this project from the Viggiano collection; for example the study in a private collection, I. Lavin, Drawings by Gian Lorenzo Bernini from the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, Princeton, 1981, p.310, fig. 110
On the recto of the present drawing the position of the cross and angel viewed from below correspond in general with the left hand section of the fresco. Similarly the circular window of the dome is lightly indicated at the bottom right of this sheet, confirming the relationship with the fresco. As Ann Sutherland Harris points out Bernini's conception was significantly more illusionistic than the design executed. In particular the end of the cross over the edge of the window opening is a characteristic blurring of architectural and painterly boundaries, rejected by Gaulli or the patron possibly on the grounds of expense.
The verso studies of hands are related to the right hand of God in the centre of the fresco
On the recto of the present drawing the position of the cross and angel viewed from below correspond in general with the left hand section of the fresco. Similarly the circular window of the dome is lightly indicated at the bottom right of this sheet, confirming the relationship with the fresco. As Ann Sutherland Harris points out Bernini's conception was significantly more illusionistic than the design executed. In particular the end of the cross over the edge of the window opening is a characteristic blurring of architectural and painterly boundaries, rejected by Gaulli or the patron possibly on the grounds of expense.
The verso studies of hands are related to the right hand of God in the centre of the fresco