Lot 42: The Scourging of Christ

Domenico Piola (Genoa 1627-1703)
The Scourging of Christ
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash
16¾ x 11½ in. (424 x 290 mm.)

An unidentified collector's inscription 'Luisa ...and N 146' (verso).

Stylistically, this monumental composition of the Scourging of Christ can be dated to the 1650s, at the time of Piola's collaboration with Valerio Castello on the frescoes of the presbyterium in the church of S. Maria in Passione, Genoa. Today only fragments of decoration remain together with some photographs that were taken before the painted cycle was destroyed by the bombing of World War II (see D. Sanguinetti, Domenico Piola e i pittori della sua 'casa', II, Soncino, 2004, pp. 489, 595). The present drawing is possibly related to the compartment with the scene of the Flagellation on the left wall of the presbyterium.
At this very early stage of his career, Piola was still very much under the influence of the art of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and that of the Lombard painters Cerano and Giulio Cesare Procaccini. The compressed composition that the artist has created around the figure of Christ is also the result of Piola's interest in Dürer and Rubens.
Piola re-worked the same subject on another occasion, around 1679, in a canvas for the church of S. Stefano in Lavagna, near Genoa. In this picture (repr. Sanguinetti, op. cit., p. 561, fig. 243), though the composition is different, we find the same attitude of the soldier behind Christ who is pushing down the crown on Christ's head.
A drawing of similar style and subject attributed to Piola, Christ crowned with thorns, was sold at Sotheby's, London, 13 December 2001, lot 167, where the same idea of the torturing soldier is borrowed.