Lot 84: Circle of Alonso Berruguete (c.1489-1561)

Piet… with inscription 'Buonarroti' on the mount pen and brown ink (minor ink gall damages), right and lower corners cut 8 x 75/8 in. (203 x 193 mm.) PROVENANCE L.D. Lempereur (L. 1740), his mount; Paris, 24 May 1773, lot 125 (as Michelangelo for 6.16 livres). NOTES Comparable to a drawing in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris (L. Boubli, Dessins espagnols, exhib. cat., Paris, Mus‚e du Louvre, 1991, no. 4) and to another sold at Christie's Monaco, 30 June 1995, lot 3 (also illustrated in L. Boubli, 'The State of Scholarship of Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century Spanish Drawings', Master Drawings, 1999, 4, p. 535, fig. 3). Further drawings by the Spanish sculptor are discussed in L. Boulbi, 'Magnifica master Alonso Berruguete: introduction … l'‚tude de son oeuvre graphique', Revue de l'art, 103, 1994. Berruguete was a pupil of his father Pedro, and went to Italy as early as 1505-6 to study with Michelangelo in Rome. There he worked both as a sculptor and a painter. In 1518 Berruguete was back in Saragossa and settled in 1526 in Valladolid. He executed a great number of sculptures for the Church of San Benito, for the Cathedral and the Hospital of San Juan Bautista.