European Drawings - 1, Catalogue of the Collections

GIULIO CESARE PROCACCINI

57 Sheet of Studies

Red chalk; H: 24 cm (9^7 /i6 in.); W: 26.5 cm (io^3 /s in.)

84.06.962

MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: At bottom right, inscribed

Ant." Coregio, 3 (inverted) followed by two numbers in

brown ink obliterated by an unknown collection mark.

PROVENANCE: Private collection, Paris; art market,

Paris.

EXHIBITIONS: None.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: None.

THIS PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED SHEET IS CHARACTER-

istic of Procaccini's manner of drawing in chalk with

Correggesque textures and richly modeled surfaces. It

also exemplifies his way of covering a sheet with various

differently scaled studies, which are nevertheless suc-

cessfully, if somewhat accidentally, integrated. The three

heads of young boys at the upper right appear to be re-

lated to the Madonna and Child with Saints (Saronno,

Sanctuario dei Miracoli),^1 which was painted after 1610

but probably not much later, thereby providing an ap-

proximate date for the drawing. This connection is borne

out by the somewhat more tenuous association of the

small-scale study of a woman below the boys' heads and

the figure at the left of San Carlo Borromeo Healing the

Blind Carlo Nava (Milan, Duomo) of approximately the

same date.

i. M. Valsecchi et al., // Seicento lombardo, exh. cat. Palazzo

Reale, Milan, 1973, vol. 2, no. 76, fig. 91.

96 ITALIAN SCHOOL • PROCACCINI