A young man attending an older kneeling man

This squared study for an unknown picture, possibly a Liberation of Saint Peter, is characteristic of Baglione's highly-disciplined technique. The soft tonal hatching, combined with touches of heightening on coloured paper, creates a powerful sense of plasticity and gives the drawing an exceptional descriptive naturalism and immediacy. The face of the young man is typically Baglionesque and similar types appear in the study for Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in the Alte Pinakothek (M. Smith O'Neil, Giovanni Baglione. Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome, Cambridge, 2002, pl. 84) and in The Birth of the Virgin in the British Museum (inv. T-12-55; op. cit., pl. 88). The physiognomy of the kneeling man is likewise similar to that of the figures in Saints Paul and Stephen, a painting now in the Musée Magnin, Dijon (op. cit., pl. 54), and the preparatory study for Saint Charles Borromeo and Saint Philip Neri, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (op. cit., pl. 62). In all his works, Baglione was deeply influenced by Raphael, seeking to ally the central Italian tradition of disegno with colouristic naturalism.

We are grateful to Dr Maryvelma Smith O'Neil for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry and for saying, on the basis of a photograph, that she believes the drawing to be by Giovanni Baglione.