Lot 28: Pier Francesco Mazzuchelli, il Morazzone (1573-1626)

King David with an angel: A section of a cupola with inscriptions 'Vitorio Bigari' and 'N 401' black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash (ink gall losses) heightened with white on faded blue paper, squared in red chalk and pen and brown ink, in an inscribed shape 101/2 x 83/4 in. (268 x 222 mm.) NOTES Related to the fresco painted by Morazzone in one of the compartments of the cupola of the Duomo at Piacenza, M. Gregori, Catalogo della Mostra del Morazzone, exhib. cat., Milan, 1962, no. 85, fig. 223. The commission required the artist to decorate the eight compartments of the cupola with Old Testament Prophets. The frescoes were begun, according to Baglione, in 1625 but was interupted early in 1626 when the artist died suddenly. Morazzone had by then only completed two of the compartments. On 12 May 1626 Guercino took up the task and painted the six remaining compartments. Morazzone's study for the Prophet Isaiah is bound, along with a number of his other drawings, in the Codice Bonola in Warsaw, M. Gregori, op. cit., fig. 224.