The chariot of the setting Sun

Details

LUCA CAMBIASO (MONEGLIA 1527-1585 MADRID)

The chariot of the setting Sun
inscribed 'Sole cadente'
pen and brown ink, brown wash, watermark circle surmounted by a cross with initial M
8 ½ x 11 7/8 in. (21.6 x 30.2 cm.)

Provenance

J. Thesmar (L. 1544a).
Lady Berlin; Sotheby's, London, 21 May 1963, lot 131.

Literature

J. Bean, 15th and 16th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1982, p. 52, under no. 38.
C. Bambach and N.M. Orenstein, Genoa Drawings and Prints 1530-1800, exh. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996, under no. 16.
J. Bober (ed.), Luca Cambiaso 1527-1585, exh. cat., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, and Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, 2006-7, pp. 360-1, under no. 74.
C. C. Bambach, online entry on Metmuseum.org/collection (2014).

Lot Essay

Annotated by the artist in pen and ink at the bottom 'Sole cadente', this dynamic composition depicts Apollo driving the chariot of dawn, seen from behind. The sheet finds a pendant in a drawing of similar size in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (no. 62.168), annotated by Cambiaso 'sole oriente', to indicate the rising of the sun in the east. The two studies have been associated with the fresco decoration of the ceiling in the salone of Villa Giustiniani Cambiaso, Genoa, executed around 1552 by Cambiaso's associate Giovanni Battista Castello, il Bergamasco (1526-1569). There is a copy of this composition by an anonymous hand in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (inv. EBA 384).

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