Lot Essay
On the occasion of the Holy Year of 1575, Pope Gregory XIII commissioned the atrium vault of the Old Saint Peter's to be renewed and along with this, Nebbia and Raffaellino da Reggio (1550-1578) were commissioned to redecorate the over-door frescoes. Karel van Mander (1548-1606), who was in Rome at the time of the execution of the frescoes, reported that Nebbia was responsible for Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow, for which there is a preparatory drawing in the Louvre (inv. 1369; Eitel-Porter, op. cit., fig. 27). As Eitel-Porter has observed, the stylistic and compositional similarities between the Louvre drawing and the present sheet suggest that the latter was also executed for the Saint Peter frescoes. Van Mander, however, named Raffaellino da Reggio as the artist of the final Peter and John Healing the Lame Man, but it is possible that Nebbia also executed a design for the scene that was ultimately set aside in favour of Raffaellino’s composition.
The sheet is inscribed by Padre Resta ('l. 149'), and in the Resta-Somers inventory in the British Library it is given to Nebbia himself (fol. 45); a later collector gave the drawing to Niccolò Circignani, while John Gere, on a mount with a photo of the drawing in the Witt Library, has questioned the attribution to Nebbia. There is a second version of the drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (inv. KdZ 22192; ibid., p. 234, fig. 29), with a number of differences, such as the position of Peter’s right hand, the inclusion of a seated figure in the centre and a different arrangement of the group of figures to the right. Based on the fact that these drawings, like the one at the Louvre, may be designs for the frescoes at Saint Peter, Eitel-Porter has recently suggested (October 2018) that it should not be ruled out that the drawings are by Nebbia himself, rather than an artist from his studio (ibid., p. 51). Furthermore, the chalk underdrawing could indicate that the artist was involved in designing the scene, rather than a workshop assistant copying it.
We are grateful to Rhoda Eitel-Porter for her assistance in cataloguing this drawing.
The sheet is inscribed by Padre Resta ('l. 149'), and in the Resta-Somers inventory in the British Library it is given to Nebbia himself (fol. 45); a later collector gave the drawing to Niccolò Circignani, while John Gere, on a mount with a photo of the drawing in the Witt Library, has questioned the attribution to Nebbia. There is a second version of the drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (inv. KdZ 22192; ibid., p. 234, fig. 29), with a number of differences, such as the position of Peter’s right hand, the inclusion of a seated figure in the centre and a different arrangement of the group of figures to the right. Based on the fact that these drawings, like the one at the Louvre, may be designs for the frescoes at Saint Peter, Eitel-Porter has recently suggested (October 2018) that it should not be ruled out that the drawings are by Nebbia himself, rather than an artist from his studio (ibid., p. 51). Furthermore, the chalk underdrawing could indicate that the artist was involved in designing the scene, rather than a workshop assistant copying it.
We are grateful to Rhoda Eitel-Porter for her assistance in cataloguing this drawing.