GIOVANNI BILIVERT (1585-1644)

Several hundred drawings by the Florentine artist Giovanni Bilivert survive: the largest holdings are today in the Uffizi in Florence and in the Louvre in Paris. Most of the artist’s drawings can be related to paintings, as the artist often prepared a composition with many different studies. The present sheet, however, cannot be connected with a known painting.

Closely comparable drawings include a group of five black chalk studies of Mary Magdalene at the Tomb (F. Baldassari, La collezione Piero ed Elena Bigongiari. Il Seicento Fiorentino tra “favola” e dramma, Milan, 2004, p. 86, under no. 6), all of which are preparatory for a large painting of 1627, today in an Italian private collection (ibid., no. 6, ill).