Giovanni Battista Gaulli (1639–1709), A Kneeling Saint With The Crucifix

Giovanni Battista Gaulli - A Kneeling Saint With The Crucifix
Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio

Genoa 1639-1709 Rome

Pen and brown ink and grey wash over traces of black chalk, within partial brown ink framing lines; indented for transfer

191 by 123 mm.

This study of a saint with a Crucifix was thought by a noted scholar collector to be possibly San Carlo Borromeo, but does not appear to relate to any surviving work by Gaulli. The artist was commissioned to make various paintings of similar saints in veneration with the Crucifx, but he also collaborated on a series of prints of devotional saints and it is most likely, as it is incised, that this particular study was intended for a project of that type. An example of a drawing by Gaulli for one such engraving is Il Beato Andrea Conti, in Chicago, after which the print was executed by Benoît Farjat. An impression of the latter is in Dresden; see Giovan Battista Gaulli, Il Baciccio 1639 – 1709, exhib. cat., Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi, 2000, p. 255, no. 15 (drawing) and no. 16 (print), both reproduced.

This entry was posted in Old Master Drawings Italian.