An angel playing a violin

Andrea Lilio was born in Ancona in the Marche. After training presumably with local artists, he moved to Rome. His entire career was spent between Rome and his native Ancona. Only recently, the present study has been convincingly connected with one of Lilio’s altarpieces, the Coronation of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, made for the church of Sant’Agostino in Ancona, which survives in four fragments in the local Pinacoteca (Pulini, op. cit., no. 59, ill.). One of the fragments of the altarpiece contains a fascinating panoramic view of the port of Ancona (fig. 1) with, near the upper right corner, the feet and some parts of the red garment of a figure seated on clouds (ibid., no. 59, ill.). The feet precisely correspond with those of the angel in the present drawing, who was depicted in the upper portion of the altarpiece playing the violin in the sky above the city. The painting is signed and dated 1598, a year in which Lilio was working on different commissions in his native town of Ancona. The figure of the angel can be compared with the Three angels in the Louvre (inv. RF44312; see C. Monbeig Goguel, ‘Alphabet pour Roseline. Dessins italiens peu connus ou redécouverts (XVe-XVIIIe siècles)’, in Hommage au dessin. Mélanges offerts à Roseline Bacou, Rimini, 1993, p. 98, 112, fig. 10). The technique, with the lively application of the chalk on blue paper and the tight grid in black chalk drawn for transferring the drawing to the canvas, is similar in both this work and the sheet under discussion.

Fig. 1. Andrea Lilio, Coronation of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino (fragment). Pinacoteca Civica, Ancona.