Lot 1: The Flight into Egypt

Giovanni Antonio Badile (Verona 1517-1560)
The Flight into Egypt
with inscriptions 'Paolo (altered from Badile) Veronese' and 'Badile'
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, on brown paper
9¾ x 14¾ in. (246 x 375 mm.)

Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Disegni veronesi del Cinquecento, 1971, no. 24.

G. Penrose, Catalogue of the de Pass Collection, Truro, 1936, p. 17, no. 125.
M. Azzi Visentini, 'Antonio Badile', Maestri della pittura Veronese, Verona, 1974, fig. 150.
M. Joannides, A loan exhibition of master drawings from the De Pass collection, the Royal Cornwall Museum, exhib. cat., London, Phillips, 1994, p. 81, listed as no. 125.

J. Barnard (L. 1419), his mount with inscriptions 'Milan No. 16.' (verso in pencil).
A.A. de Pass (L. 108a), purchased 1 January 1917, by whom donated to
The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro (L. 2014a); Christie's, London, 30 November 1965, lot 126 (where purchased by the present owner).

This rare drawing relates in style to several of Badile's paintings, notably the Presentation of the Virgin in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin, the Resurrection of Lazarus in the Cappella Avanzi in the Church of S. Bernardino, Verona (M. Azzi Visentini, op. cit., fig. 149) and the Madonna and Saints in SS. Nazaro and Celso, Verona. It is interesting to note the similarity in attitude of the donkey and angel to Jacopo Bassano's magnificent Flight into Egypt of 1532-7, now in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, indicating that Badile may have seen this picture and been been influenced by the artist.
The figure of Joseph is modelled on that in Dürer's woodcut of the Flight into Egypt (B. 89) from his Life of the Virgin series.