Lot 426: BERNARDINO INDIA

VERONA 1528-1590 THE TOILET OF VENUS, MERCURY TO THE RIGHT, CUPID AND PSYCHE TO THE LEFT Pen and brown ink and wash, over slight traces of black chalk 115 by 380 mm

Newcastle, 1974, no. 18; London, 1975, no. 12; Venice, Cini Foundation, Disegni veneti di collezioni inglesi, 1980, no. 41, reproduced

Purchased in London, Portobello Road, circa 1962

The attribution was first made by Ralph Holland, on the basis of stylistic similarities with a documented drawing in the British Museum (1972.5.13.1). John Gere agreed in a letter of 17 October 1972, and pointed out a similarity to a drawing by India of Music-Making Figures in the Clouds, formerly in the Janos Scholz collection and very similar in dimensions, which is preparatory for a painting in the organ loft of S. Giorgio in Braida, Verona.1 The paper bears a watermark which is very close to Briquet 3089 (Verona 1559). 1. Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings from the Collection of Janos Scholz, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, et al., 1973-4, p. 107, no. 87, reproduced