Lot 248: BERNARDO CASTELLO

GENOA 1557 - 1629 THE GENOESE ARRIVING IN JERUSALEM Pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white, over traces of black chalk, on blue paper 183 by 200 mm

Newcastle, 1964, no. 19; Edinburgh, The Merchants' Hall, Italian 16th Century Drawings from British Private Collections, 1969, no. 24, reproduced pl. 53; Newcastle, 1974, no. 42, reproduced pl. XVIII; London, 1975, no. 30; Newcastle, 1982, no. 31, reproduced pl. XIV A

M. Newcome, Genoese Baroque Drawings, exhib. cat., Binghamton, State University of New York, et al., 1972, p. 7, under no. 15; G. Bora, I Disegni Lombardi e Genovesi del Cinquecento, Treviso 1980, p. 87, under no. 102; G. Biviati, 'Bernardo Castello', Torquato Tasso tra letteratura, musica, teatro e arti figurative, Ferrara 1985, p. 220; Gênes triomphante et la Lombardie des Borromée, exhib. cat., Ajaccio, Musée Fesch, 2006-07, p. 20, under no. 1

An unidentified paraphe in pen and brown ink on the backing; sale, London, Christie's, 10 July 1962, lot 141 (as Polidoro da Caravaggio), purchased by Ralph Holland

This drawing was first attributed to Bernardo Castello by Philip Pouncey, who also noted the existence of two related drawings, one at Windsor and the other in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris.1 Giulia Biviati has pointed out that the present drawing and the one in Paris are related to a decoration to the right of the central fresco in a room, now very damaged, in the piano nobile of Palazzo Imperiale, Genoa. The decorative scheme was commissioned from the painter by Gian Vincenzo Imperiale, before 1599. Imperiale, an aristocrat and a literary man, was involved with the publication of the second edition of Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata in 1604. Castello's fame owed much to his illustrations for the Gerusalemme Liberata, first published in 1590, followed by two others editions in 1604 and 1617. In 1586 Castello, who always had strong ties with the literary circle of his time, coming back from a trip to Venice did show some of his drawings for the Gerusalemme Liberata to Torquato Tasso, than in Mantua. They were engraved by Agostino Carracci and Giacomo Franco and were widely distributed. 1. Windsor, inv. no. 6337; A.E. Popham and J. Wilde, The Italian Drawings of the XV and XVI Centuries...at Windsor Castle, London 1949, no. 205, reproduced pl. 151; Paris: inv. no. EBA 97, see Ajaccio, Musée Fesch, exhib. cat., reproduced p. 21, fig. 1