Simone Cantarini

Studies for the Judgment of Solomon, a double-sided drawing by Simone Cantarini

ca 1643-1648

This powerful pen and brown ink wash drawing is a study for an altarpiece depicting The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew. Signed and dated 1604, it was painted at the end of his life b...

This masterly frontispiece study, executed with a very sure hand, testifies to the survival of the great Baroque taste in 18th century Venice. It could be one of the very last works by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini: the few lines that cross the papal arms evoke those of Benedict XIV, who became pope in 1740, one year before the artist's death. 1. Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini and the European influence of Venetian history painting in the 18th century Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini was born in Venice in 1675 and trained in the studio of the Milanese painter Paolo Pagani (1655 - 1716). Pagani, who had been living in Venice since 1667, took him to Moravia and Vienna from 1690 to 1696. After a stay in Rome from 1699 to 1701, Pellegrini married Angiola Carriera in 1704, the sister of the great pastelist Rosalba Carriera. From 1708 onwards, Pellegrini left Venice and began an extensive tour of Europe: he worked in England between 1708 and 1713, where he met great success, particularly at Kimbolton Castle and Castle Howard. He then worked in Germany and the Netherlands, then in Bohemia and Austria, before returning briefly to England in 1719. In 1720 he was in Paris where he decorated the ceilings of the Royal Bank for John Law...

This magnificent drawing from the Venetian Renaissance intrigues us in many ways. It depicts an allegorical composition whose meaning partly escapes us: a veiled figure seated on a stone bench (which we have identified as Chastity), seems to be turning away from a woman's bust beside her, below which are two rabbits, a traditional allegory of fertility, but also sometimes of lust. This drawing, executed on blue paper, undoubtedly belongs to the Venetian Renaissance. The inscriptions on the back of the old mounting board indicate the various attributions considered by its last owner, the British painter and art historian Sir Lawrence Gowing. We have retained the attribution to Giuseppe Porta proposed by art historian John Arthur Gere as the most relevant. We were incredibly fortunate to find a hexagonal frame of a very similar format for this drawing, the upper corners of which were formerly cut (irregularly). This 17th-century Dutch frame comes from an aristocratic collection in Lombardy, and creates a kind of fascinating chase around this Venetian drawing...

In this lively and fresh drawing, probably taken from one of the artist's notebooks, Pajou presents us with a composition freely inspired by antiquity, as a souvenir of a visit to th...

This small study on paper, 18 x 21 cm, depicts a group of nude putti, about 7 of them, in small groups engaged in various activities, of which we can recognize that of the three in t...

The announcement in S. Maria sopra Minerva is an original drawing in pencil on paper, realized by Giovanni Fontana. The state of preservation of the artwork is good except for some ...

The proposed attribution for this drawing in brown ink on paper is the name of the painter and academician of the Tuscan-Roman neoclassical cohort Francesco Nenci (Anghiari, April 19...

Italian School, 17th century Study after Bernardino Lanino’s Frescoes in Santa Caterina, Milan Red chalk on paper 297 x 186 mm Annotated on the verso: “Vani” (otherwise unsigned) ...