Lot 43: Bartolomaeo Cesi

(1556-1629 Bologna) The Birth of the Virgin, pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, squared in black chalk, on paper, 24.9 x 41.2 cm, with an old inscription on reverse Pontormo, laid down, minute smoothed-out wrinkles at the sides, mounted and framed, (GL)

The present drawing is a design for a fresco in Santa Maria dei Bulgari in Bologna that no longer exists. According to Mario di Giampaolo, the drawing dates from c. 1594. The highly finished execution of the sheet gives an impression of what the fresco may have looked like. The delicate depiction of the figures and the careful treatment of light in this intimate scene underline Cesi’s achievements as an artist, and one can easily understand why Francesco Angeli considered the lost series of the Life of the Virgin the most beautiful cycle in Bolognese art during the Counter Reformation. According to Mario Di Giampaolo, the drawing, apart from its function as a modello for the lost fresco, may also have served as a preparatory design for a painting preserved in a private collection. The drawing can also be related to a sheet in Stuttgart and an altarpiece in San Giorgio in Ferrara (Compare: Mario Giampaolo, “Un nuovo disegno di Bartolomeo Cesi per Santa Maria dei Bulgari”, Festschrift für Konrad Oberhuber, edited by Achim Gnann and Heinz Widauer, Milan 2000, pp. 180-182).