Salvator Rosa

Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy

circa 1650

Felice Pinariccio, known as Le Lasagna (active in Bologna during the 1560s-1570s) Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Jerome Pen and brown ink, brown wash heighte...

Attributed to Francesco PENNI (1488 – 1528) Study for a fresco Pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white on prepared paper 14 x 12 cm On the mount, handwriting inscriptio...

Circle of Domenico Piola (Genoa 1627 – 1703) The Torture of Saint Concordia Black chalk, brown ink and brown wash on two sheets of paper, 40.5 x 42 cm Provenance: Estate of James I...

STUDIO OF RAFFAELLO SANZIO, called RAPHAEL (Urbino 1483 – Rome 1520) Title The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist Medium Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black ch...

Provenance: Unidentified collector’s mark “D.G.R,” lower right (Lugt 757b) Wilhelm Suida (1877–1959), New York; by descent to: Robert L. and Bertina Suida Manning, New York, until 1996 Private Collection, USA This impressive drawing of the Assumption of the Virgin is the work of the Genoese artist Giovanni Battista Paggi. The son of a nobleman, Paggi received a humanist education and was a self-taught artist. According to Paggi’s first biographer, Raffaele Soprani, it was only after encountering Luca...

Pen, ink and wash Framed dimensions: 9 ½ x 11 ¼ inches Drawn c. 1763 This small, powerful study shows St Jerome contemplating the bible with a cross and sk...

Pen, ink and wash Framed dimensions: 13 x 11 ¼ inches Drawn c.1765 Verso: a study of a hanged man Mortimer has filled this small sheet with action, depicting in the top right, Apollo and Artemis...

We would like to thank Juliette Parmentier-Courreau of the Custodia Foundation for her welcome and support during the consultation of Glomy’s Journal des Ouvrages. This spectacularly large "feuille de desseins ajustés" commissioned by François Boucher from Jean-Baptiste Glomy is emblematic of the painter's art and mastery of rocaille. It is also fully representative of the taste of this period in the field of decorative arts. The largest of these three drawings, placed at the bottom of the composition, is particularly interesting: dating from around 1756, it constitutes a modello (apparently unpublished) for the frontispiece of the "Catalogue des tableaux de Monsieur de Julienne"), preserved in the Morgan Library in New York. 1. François Boucher, the master of French rocaille The extraordinary career of Francois Boucher was unmatched by his contemporaries in versatility, consistency and output. For many, particularly the writers and collectors who led the revival of interest in the French rococo during the last century, his sensuous beauties and plump cupids represent the French eighteenth century at its most typical. His facility with the brush, even when betraying the occasional superficiality of his art, enabled him to master every aspect of painting – history and mythology, portraiture, landscape, ordinary life and, as part of larger compositions, even still life. He had been trained as an engraver, and the skills of a draftsman, which he imbued in the studio of Jean-Francois Cars (1661 – 1738), stood him in good stead throughout his career; his delightful drawings are one of the most sought-after aspects of his oeuvre. As a student of Francois Lemoyne (1688 - 1737), he mastered the art of composition. The four years he spent in Italy, from 1727-1731, educated him in the works of the masters, classics and history, that his modest upbringing had denied him. On his return to Paris in 1734, he gained full membership of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture with his splendid Rinaldo and Armida (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Although, throughout his career, he occasionally painted subjects taken from the Bible, and would always have considered himself first as a history painter, his own repertoire of heroines, seductresses, flirtatious peasant girls and erotic beauties was better suited to a lighter, more decorative subject matter. His mastery of technique and composition enabled him to move from large scale tapestry...