The Carracci Family Workshop, probably the Young Annibale Carracci (Bologna 1560 - 1609 Rome)

With P. & D. Colnaghi, Ltd., London, by 1965;
Cyril Humphris, Goleta, California, until 1995;
By whom sold ('Property from the Cyril Humphris Collection'), New York, Sotheby's, 12 January 1995, lot 44 (as Attributed to Annibale Carracci);
There purchased by the present collector.

London, P. & D. Colnaghi Ltd., Old Master Drawings, June - July 1965, no. 66 (as Annibale Carracci).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work on inscribed paper has been mounted onto a wooden panel. The wooden support may not be period, although it certainly has been in place for many years. A section of wood about three quarters of an inch wide has been added down the right edge to extend the picture slightly. This does not seem to be an original extension. There are a few cracks and tiny losses here and there. Under ultraviolet light, there seems to be a spot or two of retouching in the upper left background, a spot in the center right and a spot in the lower right. There do not seem to be any retouches at all in the face. The varnish is slightly uneven, and although the panel is a little wavy and there are slight inconsistencies to the paper on the surface, there is no real instability or reason to consider re-examining the support. In theory, one could clean and retouch the painting; however, a fresh varnish would be preferable, and a couple of small retouches in the side of the nose and cheek to eliminate the most noticeable losses would suffice. The painting is in beautiful condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This fascinating painting belongs to a small group of informal portrait studies attributed to Annibale Carracci and his family, most of which were executed on sheets of paper laid down on canvas or panel at an early date. The paper appears to be recycled from a ledger or account book of some kind but is unlikely to be from the same book in all cases: the line spacing and handwriting differ considerably from the paper of one sketch to another. Scholarly opinion is divided over the authorship of the various works in the group but what does seem clear is that even though a number of paintings are executed on similar paper, they are not necessarily by the same hand. Of the paintings that have come to light over the years only three are unanimously accepted as autograph: the Portrait of an Old Woman in a London private collection (ex-Locko Park, see fig. 1); the Portrait of an Old Woman in Profile in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the Portrait of a Bearded Old Man formerly in the Ganz collection, later with Luca Baroni Ltd., and now in a private collection. Aidan Weston-Lewis considers the present painting to be autograph and believes that it comes second only to the London Portrait of an Old Woman in terms of quality. Although their handling can, at first, seem quite different, the latter painting is more worked up whilst the portrait being presented here is extremely sketchy and must have been executed in a very short space of time. Further paintings belonging to the group include a Portrait of a Bearded Man which was offered for sale at Dorotheum, Vienna, 13 April 2011, lot 440, with a full attribution to Annibale (though it is clearly of inferior quality, and was indeed unsold). That sketch was painted on a similar sheet of paper as the present work and the date 1539 is clearly visible along the paper's margin. A further example, showing a Portrait of a Monk, is in the collection at Burghley House in Stamford. Whilst not attributable to Annibale himself in terms of quality, it is certainly Carraccesque and must have been executed in his workshop. The writing on the paper in the Burghley picture is clearly visible upper left and right, where the paint layers are absent.

The works mentioned above - and others - clearly demonstrate that paintings of this type were produced in the Carracci circle and attributions to Annibale can only be based on stylistic and qualitative judgments. The very nature of these spontaneous sketches means that they were unlikely to have been commissioned or paid for by their respective sitters. Daniele Benati has dated most of the sketches to the first half of the 1580s and Aidan Weston-Lewis has suggested that they may even date from slightly earlier, perhaps the late '70s or early '80s. In either case - if one is to trust the date on the ex-Dorotheum picture - it seems that these heads were being sketched out on accounting books dating from four or five decades earlier.