Lot 416: GIOVANNI DE' VECCHI

BORGO SAN SEPOLCRO C.1537 - 1615 ROME RECTO AND VERSO: THE RESURRECTION Pen and brown ink (recto and verso), over red chalk and brown wash, heightened with white (recto), over black chalk (verso); the figure of Christ, in pen and ink and purple wash, heightened with white, a cut out pentimento pasted on the recto 238 by 180 mm

Newcastle, 1974, no. 22 (as Giovanni de' Vecchi); London, 1975, no. 15 (as Giovanni de'Vecchi); Newcastle, 1982, no. 11 (as Giovanni de'Vecchi)

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 25 June 1970, lot 12 (as Giovanni de' Vecchi), purchased by Ralph Holland

The figure of the resurrected Christ on the recto, which has been cut out and pasted on the sheet, is drawn in a more delicate manner than the rest of the surrounding figures. Both the style and the technique are typical of Giovanni de' Vecchi,1 whose use of purple wash is a distinctive feature of many of his drawings, often mentioned by Philip Pouncey. Holland proposed in his exhibitions that the whole sheet was by de' Vecchi, but in fact his style is recognisable only in the cut-out figure of Christ. The rest of the recto and verso must be by another hand, surely an artist active in Rome at the time of the pontificate of Sixtus V (1585-90). The style is close to that of the drawing here attributed to Cesare Rossetti (see lot...). 1. The purchase of the present drawing is mentioned by Nicholas Turner in his writing, in the introduction of this catalogue p....