Lot 47: ORAZIO SAMACCHINI BOLOGNA 1532 - 1577

RECTO: STUDY OF A YOUNG BOY, SEATED; VERSO: A TRACING OF THE SAME FIGURE

measurements note
192 by 154mm

bears old attribution bottom left in pen and brown ink: ...a del Sarto

black chalk (recto and verso), the verso squared in black chalk

PROVENANCE

J.P. Heseltine (according to a note on the back of the mount);
does not bear Michael Ingram's collector's mark

NOTE

This drawing resembles stylistically Samacchini's very interesting drawing of Susannah Bathing, which is a preparatory study for one of a pair of small panel paintings in the Uffizi (see Drawing in Bologna 1500-1600, exhibition catalogue, London, Courtauld Institute Galleries, 1992, cat. no. 53, and fig. 24). The handling of chalk in both drawings is very similar, as is the morphology of the faces. The observations about the Susannah in the Courtauld exhibition catalogue can be applied equally to the present drawing: ' ...[it reflects] Samacchini's interest in Roman and Tuscan Mannerism but in the less static execution and in the number of pentimenti [it shows] an eclectic and less predictable side of his artistic personality'.