Lot 16: CAMILLO PROCACCINI

CAMILLO PROCACCINI BOLOGNA 1551 - CIRCA 1629 MILAN STUDY OF A FIGURE LYING ON THE GROUND Black and white chalk on blue paper 185 by 192 mm

Sale, New York, Sotheby's, 29 January 1997, lot 16, where bought by the present owner

This drawing was first recognised as the work of Camillo at the time of the sale in 1997. It is a preparatory study for the figure of the martyr in the foreground of Camillo's painting, The Martyrdom of Sts. James the Lesser and Philip, now in the Accademia, Ravenna (fig.1). The altarpiece dates from the early years of the seventeenth century and was once in the basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Nancy Ward Neilson, in her discussion of the style of the altarpiece, writes that it has much in common with the paintings in the Chapel of St. Victor, executed in 1601 for the church of San Vittore al Corpo, Milan. The present study is stylistically very close to the black chalk study for the executioner to the right of the composition, now in the Ambrosiana, Milan, first attributed to Camillo by Nancy Ward Neilson.υ1

1. Inv. no. F 255; N. Ward Neilson, Camillo Procaccini, Paintings and Drawings, New York and London 1979, p. 148, fig. 121