Hylas stolen by the Nymphs

'Hylas stolen by the Nymphs' was the subject of an intarsia originally in the church of Sant' Andrea (formerly Basilica of Junius Bassus) and by the 17th century in the collections of the Palazzo Albani del Drago alle Quattro Fontane. It was engraved by Pietro Antonio Pazzi as pl.XIIII, Animadversiones Ad Appendicem, Picturae Antiquae (1750). The drawing offered here is a mirror image of a watercolour by Pietro Santo Bartoli (1635-1700) circa 1690, now in the Collection of the British Architectural Library. The transposition of the image suggests that this is Pazzi's engraver's copy after Bartoli's watercolour, to allow the printed image to come out the right way. The present drawing dates to circa 1740.

We are grateful to Charles Hind for his assistance with cataloguing this lot.