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Lot Essay
Giulio Cesare Procaccini was one of the most distinctive talents of north Italian painting at the turn of the seventeenth century. Raised in Bologna, he moved together with his father Ercole to Milan, in around 1585, and initially trained as a sculptor, the only member of the Procaccini artistic dynasty to do so. By around 1600, however, he had turned to painting and in short time became a key figure in a flourishing artistic movement in Lombardy, displaying compelling Mannerist tendencies and anticipating the dramatic energy of the Baroque.
It was testament to Procaccini’s talent that the artist attracted the patronage of the most discerning collectors of the day, both in Milan, receiving commissions from Scipione Toso, Pirro and Fabio Visconti, and in Genoa from connoisseur Giovanni Carlo Doria. Doria’s posthumous inventory recorded over 25 pictures by the artist and, in his correspondence, Procaccini is described as his ‘amicho commune di molto vallore’ (‘our mutual friend of much value’). Perhaps his most significant commission came in 1610, when he was charged to make six monumental canvases for the Duomo in Milan to celebrate the canonization of Carlo Borromeo.
He was equally adept, however, when working on a more intimate scale, as this finely executed copper beautifully illustrates. Dating to the early part of his career, the composition relates closely to his altarpiece Assumption of the Virgin with saints, made for the Church of San Bartolomeo in Como (now Como, Musei Civici), with the similarities especially evident in the Madonna’s outstretched arms, her tilted head and the billowing drapery. As noted in the recent catalogue raisonné, there are also likenesses to be found between the angels holding the Madonna here and those frescoed for the church of Santa Maria presso San Celso, a project commissioned in 1601 (op. cit.). A preparatory drawing for the angel at left is in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 723; see H. Brigstocke, Procaccini in America, London and New York, 2002, p. 21, pl. 35; and N. Ward Neilson, Giulio Cesare Procaccini disegnatore, Busto Arsizio, 2004, p. 97, no. 50, fig. 74).
It was testament to Procaccini’s talent that the artist attracted the patronage of the most discerning collectors of the day, both in Milan, receiving commissions from Scipione Toso, Pirro and Fabio Visconti, and in Genoa from connoisseur Giovanni Carlo Doria. Doria’s posthumous inventory recorded over 25 pictures by the artist and, in his correspondence, Procaccini is described as his ‘amicho commune di molto vallore’ (‘our mutual friend of much value’). Perhaps his most significant commission came in 1610, when he was charged to make six monumental canvases for the Duomo in Milan to celebrate the canonization of Carlo Borromeo.
He was equally adept, however, when working on a more intimate scale, as this finely executed copper beautifully illustrates. Dating to the early part of his career, the composition relates closely to his altarpiece Assumption of the Virgin with saints, made for the Church of San Bartolomeo in Como (now Como, Musei Civici), with the similarities especially evident in the Madonna’s outstretched arms, her tilted head and the billowing drapery. As noted in the recent catalogue raisonné, there are also likenesses to be found between the angels holding the Madonna here and those frescoed for the church of Santa Maria presso San Celso, a project commissioned in 1601 (op. cit.). A preparatory drawing for the angel at left is in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice (inv. no. 723; see H. Brigstocke, Procaccini in America, London and New York, 2002, p. 21, pl. 35; and N. Ward Neilson, Giulio Cesare Procaccini disegnatore, Busto Arsizio, 2004, p. 97, no. 50, fig. 74).