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Lot Essay
The attribution to Girolamo da Carpi was suggested to Alfred Normand by Philip Pouncey, with reference to a group of drawings after the antique from Carpi's studio now in the British Museum (J. Gere and P. Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Artists working in Rome, London, 1983, nos. 154-163).
The drawing records, through the prism of Girolamo da Carpi's aesthetic sensibility, a Julio-Claudian relief of the sacrifice of the suovetaurilia rediscovered in the late 15th Century. In the mid 16th Century it was in the collection of the Venetian Cardinal Domenico Grimani in Rome, where Carpi must have seen it. After 1586 it was taken to Venice where it remained until it was plundered by Napoleon's troops in 1797. Despite specific attempts by Venice for it to be repatriated after Waterloo it remained in the Louvre, almost certainly though the determination of its director, Dominique-Vivant Denon. Denon's regard for the piece is reflected in his ownership of the present drawing.
The drawing records, through the prism of Girolamo da Carpi's aesthetic sensibility, a Julio-Claudian relief of the sacrifice of the suovetaurilia rediscovered in the late 15th Century. In the mid 16th Century it was in the collection of the Venetian Cardinal Domenico Grimani in Rome, where Carpi must have seen it. After 1586 it was taken to Venice where it remained until it was plundered by Napoleon's troops in 1797. Despite specific attempts by Venice for it to be repatriated after Waterloo it remained in the Louvre, almost certainly though the determination of its director, Dominique-Vivant Denon. Denon's regard for the piece is reflected in his ownership of the present drawing.