Lot Essay
According to Steinberg's inscription on the mount, this drawing once belonged to Giovanni Piancastelli, the first director of the Borghese Gallery. Piancastelli amassed an enormous collection of drawings - by one account it included around 15,000 sheets. Many of his theatrical drawings were acquired by the Cooper Union Museum in New York, and the Boston collectors Edward and Mary Brandegee, who subsequently sold 8,200 of those drawings to the Cooper Hewitt in 1938. Janos Scholz is recorded as having acquired a group of Brandegee drawings in 1944, but while his opinion about the attribution of this drawing is noted on the mount, Steinberg's archives include an invoice from the New York dealer Herbert Feist, who sold the drawing for $294.25 on 2 November 1972.
This drawing has Beinaschi's characteristic patches of parallel hatching, as well as short, sharp strokes to indicate fingers and toes.
This drawing has Beinaschi's characteristic patches of parallel hatching, as well as short, sharp strokes to indicate fingers and toes.