Master Drawings 2020

No.29 Luigi Sabatelli 1. ‘Soggetti greci, romani, ebraici, danteschi, fiorentini, omerici, ecc., ecc., in somma senza numero. Io calcolo che nella mia dimora in Roma, che fu di oltre quattro anni, avrò guadagnato circa cento zecchini.’; Sabatelli, Cenni biografici, op.cit., p.26.

2. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 192-241.

No.30 Christoph Heinrich Kniep 1. Lord (Francis) Napier, Notes on Modern Painting at Naples, London, 1855, p.68.

2. C. Stumpf, ‘Der Zeichner Christoph Heinrich Kniep (1755-1825) – Landschaftsauffassung und Antikenrezeption. By Georg Streibl’ [book review], The Burlington Magazine, July 1999, p.366.

3. Hildesheim, Roemer-Museum, Christoph Heinrich Kniep, Zeichner an Goethes Seite: zwischen Klassizismus, Realismus und Romantik, 1992; Georg Striehl, Der Zeichner Christoph Heinrich Kniep (1755-1825) – Landschaftsauffassung und Antikenrezeption, Hildesheim, 1998.

No.31 Pelagio Palagi 1. Roberta J. M. Olson, ‘Introduction: In the Dawn of Italy’, in Roberta J. M. Olson, Ottocento: Romanticism and Revolution in 19th-Century Italian Painting, exhibition catalogue, Baltimore and elsewhere, 1992-1993, p.20.

2. Adriano Cera, ed., Disegni, acquarelli, tempere di artisti italiani dal 1770 ca. al 1830 ca., Bologna, 2002, Vol.II, unpaginated, Palagi no.29.

3. Claudio Poppi, ed., Pelagio Palagi pittore: Dipinti dalla raccolte del Comune di Bologna, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, 1996, p.35, fig.12.

4. Cera, op.cit., unpaginated, Palagi no.41.

5. Anonymous sale, Milan, Finarte, 18 December 1996, lot 143 (sold for 4,660 lire).

6. Valeria Roncuzzi Roversi Monaco, ‘Pelagio Palagi e l’incisione’, in Poppi, ed., op.cit, illustrated p.99.

7. Roversi Monaco, op.cit., illustrated p.100; Fausto Gozzi, Ubaldo, Gaetano e Mauro Gandolfi: le incisioni, exhibition catalogue, San Matteo della Decima, 2002, unpaginated, no.38; Francesca Lui, ‘Mauro Gandolfi incisore e Pelagio Palagi tra Milano e Bologna’, in Marco Riccòmini, ed., Scritti per Eugenio: 27 testi per Eugenio Riccòmini, Milan, 2017, p.208, fig.7.

No.32 Antonio Basoli 1. Inv. 34049; Maria Ida Biggi, ‘Disegni di scenografia nelle collezioni Donghi e Certani’, Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte, 2003, p.513, fig.13.

2. Inv. 1984-56-636; see Cazort and Johnson 1982; Ann Percy and Mimi Cazort, Italian Master Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2004, unpaginated, no.61 (where dated c.1795-1800).

3. Geneva, Nicolas Rauch S.A,, Collection Edmond Fatio, 3-4 June 1959, lot 3. The drawing is signed and dated 1840, and is inscribed ‘Il gran Memmonio di Egitta’.

4. Caterina Lipparini may have been a relation of the Bolognese painter Lodovico Lipparini (1800-1856), who painted a portrait of Basoli in c.1824, the same year this drawing was made.

No.33 Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres 1. For his drawn portraits, Ingres used specially prepared tablets comprised of several sheets of paper wrapped around a cardboard centre, over which was stretched a sheet of fine white English paper. The smooth paper on which he drew was therefore cushioned by the layers beneath, and, made taut by being stretched over the cardboard tablet, provided a resilient surface for his finely-executed pencil work.

2. ‘Wenn man die Männer an ihren Frauen erkennen kann, so wirft das Porträt von Mme Balze das schönste Licht auf ihren Gatten. Der weibliche Reiz ihrer Haltung und ihrer Züge gehört offensichtlich nicht allein einem vorteilhaften Äußeren, sondern auch der Anmut des Gemütes an.’; Naef, op.cit., Vol.II, pp.583-584.

3. Paul and Raymond Balze grew to be very close to Ingres, who treated them almost like sons, often addressing them as ‘cher enfants’, even when they were grown men.

4. Inv. FII 35 (PK); Naef, op.cit., Vol.V, pp.118-119, no.312. The dimensions of the drawing are 180 x 237 mm.

5. ‘[Ingres] exécute pour son ami deux délicieux portraits à la mine de plomb qui sont conservés comme deux trésors dans la famille Balze.’; Flandrin, op.cit., p.141.