Category: ART GENRES

Jean Pillement (1728-1808, Washerwomen and fishermen at a stream, a village beyond

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Jean Pillement (Lyon 1728-1808)

Washerwomen and fishermen at a stream, a village beyond

Description:
signed ‘J. Pillement’ (in brown ink)
black chalk, stumping, grey wash, three watermarks device and proprietary
15 x 19 ¾ in. (38.2 x 50.2 cm.)

Jacopo Negretti (1548-1628), St Francis with Brother Rufus

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Jacopo Negretti, called Palma Il Giovane

Venice cerca 1548-1628

Pen and brown ink and grey wash over traces of black chalk;

bears inscription in pen and brown ink lower right: del Palma;
212 by 141 mm.

The above study for St. Francis does not appear to be directly related to any of Palma’s known surviving paintings. A notable scholar compares this composition with the painting of The Stigmata of St. Francis in San Rocco, Bergamo, executed in 1595. See S. Mason Rinaldi, Palma il Giovane, L’opera Completa, Milan 1984, p. 76, no. 28, reproduced p. 277, no. 222.
Another drawing by Palma of the same subject and stylistically very similar to the present sheet was sold, London, Christie’s, 14 April 1992, lot 104.

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), Studies Of Four Heads For St. William Receiving The Monastic Habit

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Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino

Cento 1591-1666 Bologna

Pen and brown ink;

a red chalk repetition of the head seen in profile on the verso;

190 by 140 mm.

This is a preparatory study for the head of the Bishop and three separate studies for the heads of the two acolytes to his left, in the altarpiece St. William of Aquitaine receiving the monastic habit, painted by Guercino in 1620 for the church of S. Gregorio, Bologna, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of the same city (fig. 1). As noted by Turner, the composition of this celebrated altarpiece, the most important commission the painter received before his departure for Rome in 1621, can be followed in a large number of surviving drawings: ‘…an unrivalled series of more than twenty preparatory studies which bear witness to the extraordinary process that lay behind the invention of the composition’. See N. Turner and C. Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, London 1991, p. 58, reproduced p. 56, fig. 7. The style of the present sheet, as stressed by Turner, can be closely associated with the fascinating sheet of studies for the same composition, including the kneeling figure of St. William, formerly in Sir Denis Mahon’s collection and now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Sir Denis Mahon suggested in the Bologna exhibition catalogue that the female head on the verso must have been drawn after the death of Guercino, when the drawing was in the possession of the Gennari family.   For discussion and images, see N. Turner and C. Plazzotta, op. cit., p. 57, no. 27, reproduced; for other related drawings, see also nos. 26 and 28

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), The Death of Pentheus

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inscribed in grey ink, lower left: nel palazzo giustiniani
134 by 194 mm

David was particularly fond of scenes and themes from Classical Greek antiquity. This is a drawing of an antique relief in the Giustiniani Collection, which David would likely have fresh on one of his trips to Rome.

Pentheus was a king of Thebes. He violently disapproved of the Bacchic cult, but was tempted to watch its rites. He was discovered by his mother, Agave, and his aunts, who in their fury dismembered him. The story is told by Euripides in The Bacchae and his account is quite accurately shown here: ‘Possessed of Bacchus… his left arm she clutched in both her hands, and set against the wretch’s ribs her foot, and tore his shoulder out…’ See P.P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, London 1986, p. 120-21, no. 87 (the story and quotation given in a description of a different sarcophagus).

Donato Creti (1671-1749), A Standing Male Nude Standing Near a Rock by a River, a dog in the left foreground, A Dog In The Left Foreground

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Pen and brown ink;
230 by 190 mm

Creti is well known for these very finished studies of nudes and landscapes indicating a likely commercial savvy concerning the potential sale of his preliminary works. Here the drawing is in a vertical format of bathers in wooded landscapes, probably representing classical subjects such as Endymion or Apollo in elegant poses. As demonstrated by Marco Riccomini in his catalogue of Creti’s drawings, these were inspired by Creti’s knowledge of ancient sculptures. They were clearly drawn as works of art in their own right, and can now be found in several public and private collections. Diane De Grazia suggested a dating to the 1720s for a drawing of Apollo Standing in a River Landscape, from the Armand Hammer collection, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, about which she wrote: ‘Creti is known to have given many of his drawings to his friends, who must have appreciated their mysterious pastoral subjects and refined techniques.‘ See M. Riccomini, Donato Creti, Le opere su carta, Turin 2012, nos. 11.5, 63.3, 93.1, 96.13; and Master Drawings from the Armand Hammer Collection, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1987, p. 97, under no. 14.