Hercules overcoming the Hesperides, after the Carracci, Palazzo Fava, Bologna

Details

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806)
Hercules overcoming the Hesperides, after the Carracci, Palazzo Fava, Bologna
with the Abbé de Saint-Non's inscription 'Louis Carache Palais favi Bologne'
black chalk, watermark proprietary
8 5/8 x 12¼ in. (220 x 310 mm.)

Provenance

Henri Grosjean Maupin; Paris, Drouot, 26-27 March 1958, lot 55 (to G. Heilbrun).
Purchased from W.H. Schab, New York, 1959, catalogue 26, no. 134.

Literature

A. Ananoff, L'Oeuvre Dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Paris, 1961, II, no. 1057.
P. Rosenberg, Panopticon Italiano, Un diario di viaggio ritrovato, 1759-1762, Rome, 1986, no. 296.

Engraved

Abbé de Saint-Non, Fragments, troisième suite, Paris, 1770-75, no. 3, and Griffonis, Paris, 1772, no. 204.

Lot Essay

After the fresco decorations for the Palazzo Fava, Bologna, probably started soon after it was built in 1580, and in which Ludovico, Annibale and Agostino Carracci all collaborated.
Fragonard visited Bologna with the Abbé de Saint-Non briefly in late 1759 and again for the month of July 1761, and it is likely that the series of drawings after paintings by earlier masters dates from this second visit.
A drawing by Fragonard of Aeneas and companions fighting the Harpies from a neighbouring frieze in the Palazzo Fava is in a private collection, A. Ananoff, op. cit., no. 1054.

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