Lot Essay
This view is most likely Tuscan and was presumably drawn in, or after 1615, when Cantagallina returned to Tuscany from his 1612-13 tour of the Netherlands. Large and finished landscape drawings like this one were praised by Cantagallina's early biographer Filippo Baldinucci (1624-1697) who noted that the artist was ‘famous for his landscape drawings in pen’. This drawing possibly comes from an album of over a hundred landscape drawings by Cantagallina and other artists, formerly in the collection of the scholar and antiquary Dr. Henry Wellesley (1791-1866), nephew of the Duke of Wellington, that was sold at Hodgson’s, London, 26 November 1954, lot 596. The album was bought by the art dealer Hans Calmann who broke it up and sold the drawings separately.