Lot 528: Domenico Caresana (Cureglia 1574-1619 Riva San Vitale)

Domenico Caresana (Cureglia 1574-1619 Riva San Vitale)
An angel holding a scroll
inscribed 'Qui[d nomen] est sup[er meum] nome[n]' and with number '7'
black chalk, brush and brown wash, heightened with white, on grey-blue paper, squared in black chalk
13 3/8 x 8½ in. (34.2 x 21.7 cm.), unframed

W. Mayor, A Brief Chronological Description of Original Drawings and Sketches by the most celebrated masters ... formed by ... W. Mayor, London, 1875, no. 342 (as Giovanni Lanfranco, for a painting in S. Andrea della Valle).

W. Mayor (L. 2799).
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 22 January 2004, lot 19.

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In 2004 Professor Giulio Bora pointed out that this drawing is preparatory for the figure of an angel in Caresana's fresco of The Holy Trinity in Glory (1614) in the vault of S. Orsola, Como (M. Gregori, et al., Pittura a Como e nel Canton Ticino: dal Mille al Settecento, Milan, 1994, fig. 93). Caresana's first master was his uncle Giovanni Battista Tarilli, with whom he worked in Giornico, north of Lugano. After 1594 he worked in the Duomo and S. Maria Passerella, Milan, and is also recorded in Ticino, around Lake Como and in the Val Chiavenna. His surviving works are very much in the tradition of Gaudenzio Ferrari and Camillo Procaccini. Only two other drawings by Caresana have been identified, both in the same technique as the present drawing: studies for his Assumption of the Virgin in S. Federico, Como (G. Bora, 'Due secoli d'arte a Milano: La pittura in Santa Maria della Passione', in Santa Maria della Passione e il Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi a Milano, Milan, 1981, p. 161).