Francesco FONTEBASSO
Clorinda Pleads for the Life of Sophronia and Olindo
Medium Watercolour, pen and brown ink and light brown wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk
Dimension 20 x 26.8 cm (7⁷/₈ x 10¹/₂ inches)
This drawing, which has been dated by the Fontebasso scholar Marina Magrini to the middle of the 1750s, reveals something of the long-lasting influence of his first teacher, Sebastiano Ricci, in its composition, colouring and brushwork. While the present sheet has remained unrelated to any surviving painting or fresco by Francesco Fontebasso, it should be noted that a now-lost painting of the same subject by the artist is recorded in the 19th century; a vertical oval canvas of ‘Il Supplizio di Sofronia e Olindo’ which was in the collection of Carlo Berra in Venice in 1863.
The corners of the sheet cut.
Medium: Watercolour, pen and brown ink and light brown wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk
Dimension: 20 x 26.8 cm (7⁷/₈ x 10¹/₂ inches)
Provenance: Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 15 April 1980, lot 119
Adolphe Stein, Paris, in 1981
Wolfgang Ratjen, Munich
Roberto Franchi, Bologna
Christian Lapeyre, Milan, in 1994
P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 1994
Private collection.
Literature: Marina Magrini, Francesco Fontebasso: I disegni, in Saggi e memorie di storia dell arte, Vol.17, 1990, p.190, no.156, p.355, fig.64 (where dated to the mid-1750s).
Exhibition: London, Bury Street Gallery, Master Drawings presented by Adolphe Stein, 1981, no.50; New York and London, Colnaghi, Master Drawings, 1994, no.38; Stanford University, Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Classic Taste: Drawings and Decorative Arts from the Collection of Horace Brock, 2000.
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