Cristofano ALLORI

Cristofano Allori produced a large number of preparatory studies for each of his painted works, and a significant corpus of drawings by him is in the Uffizi in Florence. While none of the hands in the present sheet can be definitively connected with any surviving works by the artist, the style and technique of the drawing is very close to his draughtsmanship, and we are grateful to Miles Chappell for his help in confirming the attribution. The hand holding a knife and gripping some hair, at the bottom of the sheet, would suggest that it may have been intended for a painting of The Sacrifice of Isaac, or perhaps a Judith and Holofernes.

The present sheet bears the drystamp, in the form of his coat of arms, of the Dutch-born polymath and collector Baron Cornelius Ver Heyden de Lancey (1889-1984), who had a fascinating life and career. A dentist, physician, lawyer and art historian, Ver Heyden was fluent in five languages and was a collector of French books, manuscripts, letters and autographs, as well as a small group of Italian, French and Dutch drawings. Born in Middelburg in Holland, he was the son of a physician and himself trained as a medical doctor in Leiden and America before settling in London and becoming a British citizen. A specialist in surgery of the mouth and jaw, he suffered an injury to his hand that limited his effectiveness as a surgeon, and chose to retrain as a lawyer. Called to the bar at Middle Temple, Ver Heyden came to specialize in medical legal cases. He lived for some time in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s, in both Rome and Florence, practicing as a dentist and developing a serious interest in art history. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Ver Heyden (now Baron de Lancey) returned to Britain and was charged with establishing convalescent homes for injured soldiers on the island of Jersey. With the occupation of the Channel Islands by the Germans, he continued working as a doctor and dentist. He remained in Jersey after the war, closely involved in both medical and legal circles, and eventually becoming an Advocate at the Royal Courts in Jersey. Ver Heyden died at the age of 95.