Pietro Antonio NOVELLI

Another drawing by Pietro Antonio Novelli of the goddess Diana - a more fully developed composition showing her seated full-length in a landscape and with a hunting dog at her side - was on the art market in New York in 2014; that drawing is derived from a painting by Sebastiano Ricci now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. A larger drawing in pen and brown ink of a young woman in a similar pose, although without the attributes of the goddess Diana, appeared at auction in Paris in 2004.

The present sheet bears the mark of the 19th century Milanese collector Captain Carlo Prayer (1826-1900) and was later in the collection of the brothers Juan (1862-1920) and Felix Bernasconi (1860-1914), prominent Milanese industrialists who formed an impressive collection of paintings and drawings, mainly by Italian painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as Old Master drawings.