Pietro Berrettini, called Pietro da Cortona

The Double-Numbering Collector, with numbering in brown ink, upper center: 3 and lower center: Tre;

Sale, London, Christie's, 10 July 2001, lot 62;

With Artemis Fine Art, London;

From whom acquired, 2002.

We are grateful to Dr. Jörg Martin Merz for kindly providing us with new information on this drawing, subsequent to its appearance on the art market in 2001-2 (see Provenance), and for informing us that it will be included in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the drawings of Pietro da Cortona.¹ Merz relates the present study to the artist's painting, Christ on the Cross, in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan.² The picture was first recorded in the 1638 inventory of the collection of Cardinal Cesare Monti (1593-1650) in Milan.³ Monti was created archbishop of Milan in 1632. The cardinal returned from Spain in 1634 and from that time on he stayed in Rome. Merz suggests that it is most likely that the painting was acquired or given to him then.⁴ In the Cardinal's testament of 1650 the Crucifix was granted extraordinary indulgence by Pope Urban VIII, Barberini (1568-1644).⁵

Merz feels that the present sheet conforms better with Monti's Crucifix, than with Cortona’s better known Crucifixion of about the same date, executed for the private Chapel of the Barberini Palace.⁶ Although there are interesting similarities with the Barberini Crucifixion, Merz is reluctant to relate the present sheet to that commission, observing important differences in the pose and the lighting of the figure of Christ.⁷  

At the time of the 2001 sale (see Provenance), the attribution to Cortona of this sheet, traditionally given to Domenichino, was first suggested by Nicholas Schwed. This attribution was confirmed by Merz, who compared it with two red chalk studies, one then in the Villa Farnesina, Rome, the other in the Uffizi, Florence.⁸

1. Jörg Martin Merz, Pietro da Cortona's drawings. Catalogue raisonné, forthcoming, cat. no. 199, reproduced fig. 114 

2. Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, inv. no. 817; see, Musei e Gallerie di Milano: Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Dipinti dalla metà del Cinquecento alla metà del Seicento, Verona 2006; pp. 195f., cat. 267, reproduced in colour

3. See Le Stanze del Cardinale Monti, 1635-1650. La collezione ricomposta, exhib. cat., Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1994, p. 109, no. 179

4. According to Merz this is also substantiated by the existence of an exact copy of Cortona's Christ by Antonio Maria Antonozzi in his miniature of a missal commissioned by Pope Urban VIII, Barberini (1568-1644) in around 1634 (email dated 9 November 2023) 

5. See exhib. cat., Milan, Palazzo Reale, op. cit., p. 114, note 89

6. The grandiose decorative scheme for the Barberini Palace must have started between 1630 and 1631. The decoration of the chapel must have been completed by 8 September 1632, when the daughter of Don Taddeo Barberini (1603-1647), the Pope's nephew, was baptized there. Don Taddeo had married Anna Colonna (1601-1658) in 1627.

7. Dr. Merz has pointed out some differences also between the present sheet, drawn from life, and the Ambrosiana's painting (email dated 9 November 2023).

He wrote:' the hip and the upper body are slightly swung, and the arms, drawn only fragmentarily and without hands, are directed more upwards. Therefore it seems plausible that in this stage, the figure drawn from life was not yet envisioned to be placed on a slender cross.' 

8. Rome, Istituto Nazionale della Grafica, FC 125389; Florence, Uffizi, inv. no. 11759 F.; both drawings are related to Cortona's life drawings done in preparation for the engravings for Ferrari's book De Florum Cultura published in Rome in 1633. 

J.M. Merz, Pietro da Cortona, der Aufstieg zum führenden Maler im barocken Rom, Tübingen 1991, reproduced figs. 309, 317