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Filippo BelliniComposition with Two Kings and Two Franciscansc. 1580
c. 1580
$3,547.43
£2,660.60
€3,000
CA$4,966.84
A$5,474.82
CHF 2,828.87
MX$65,447.55
NOK 35,587.05
SEK 33,446.76
DKK 22,855.51
About the Item
Filippo Bellini (Urbino 1550 – Macerata 1603)
Composition with Two Kings and Two Franciscans
Pen and brown ink over black chalk, 28.1 × 25.5 cm
Condition: slightly light-struck; small stains and minor creases. Numbered at lower centre “n°67”.
Provenance:
Sotheby’s, 2 July 1997, lot 170;
Christie’s, 18 March 2004, lot 78;
Brissonneau, 8 June 2007, lot 71;
Private collection, France.
Bellini, a native of Urbino, belonged to the vibrant artistic milieu shaped by Federico Barocci and the wider Central Italian Mannerist current. Active chiefly in the Marche—Macerata, Ancona and Cingoli—he supplied altarpieces and portraits attuned to the spiritual and rhetorical aims of the Counter-Reformation. His drawings are comparatively rare and reveal a supple graphic language that bridges Barocci’s softness with a more linear, calligraphic touch.
This sheet captures a moment of courtly-sacred exchange: two crowned rulers face two Franciscans, one grasping a book, the other raising a cross or arrows as attributes. While the precise episode remains to be identified, the theme resonates with Counter-Reformation hagiography, where humble friars admonish power and invite rulers to piety. Bellini arranges the quartet in a shallow stage, hinging the composition on opposing diagonals that guide the eye from the seated monarch at left to the reclining, sceptred king at right.
The swift, tapering pen lines define wiry contours and animated hands, while the underlying black-chalk scaffolding fixes the principal masses of drapery and chair arms. Heads are slightly elongated, with emphatic profiles and mobile beards—traits consistent with late Mannerist physiognomies in the Marche. The sanctity of the friars is suggested with discreet halos and the gravity of their habits, set against the worldly splendour of the crowned figures.
Subtle corrections—small shifts in the kings’ legs and the placement of the right-hand sceptre—indicate an exploratory study rather than a mere copy. The careful seating motifs and angled backs suggest Bellini was testing a design for an altarpiece or chapel lunette, where paired interlocutors frame a devotional centre. The economy of hatching and the sparing use of wash leave the paper luminous, enhancing the rhetorical clarity of gesture and gaze.
Beyond its compositional interest, the sheet locates Bellini within a network of contemporaries—Barocci in Urbino, Simone de Magistris in Caldarola, and the Roman Mannerists whose inventions circulated through prints. It speaks to Bellini’s talent for narrative compression: four figures, few props, and yet a play of authority and humility is fully staged. The drawing’s state of preservation—light sunning, minor spots and folds—does not impede legibility and, if anything, underscores its status as a working document from a studio invested in both grace and persuasion.
Elegant and incisive, this study condenses Bellini’s pictorial aims: persuasive devotion, courtly theatre, and the humane observation of faces and hands. It is a telling witness to the graphic culture that underpinned painting in the Marche at the turn of the seventeenth century.
- Creator:Filippo Bellini (1550 - 1603, Italian)
- Creation Year:c. 1580
- Dimensions:Height: 28.1 in (71.38 cm)Width: 25.5 in (64.77 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Paris, FR
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2258217094742
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