Attributed to Prospero Antichi

Possibly John Barnard, London;

George[?] Hibbert, London;

Coghlan Briscoe, Dublin;

William M. Crofton, London;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's 7 July 1959, lot 95 (entire sketchbook);

With Thomas Agnew and Sons, London, 1965;

Dr Alfred Scharf (1900–1965);

Thence by descent;

Anonymous sale, London, Bonhams, 4 April 2023, lot 210 (as circle of Domenico Beccafumi);

Where acquired by the present owner.

R. de Liphart Rathshoff, 'Un Libro di Schizzi di Domenico Beccafumi', in Rivista d’Arte, 1935, pp. 34–37, reproduced fig. 1 (as Beccafumi);

D. Sanminiatelli, Beccafumi,, Florence 1957, pp. 186–87 (as Marco Pino);

Domenico Beccafumi 1486–1551: drawings from a sketch book, exh. cat., London, Agnews, 1 – 27 November 1965, no. 31 (as Beccafumi);

A. de Marchi, 'Beccafumi e la sua maniera: difficultà del disegno senese', in Domenico Beccafumi e il suo tempo, exh. cat., Milan 1990 (as period copies after Beccafumi);

A. F. Tempesti, The Robert Lehman Collection. V. Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth Century Drawings, New York and Princeton 1991, pp. 262–66, under no. 87;

P. Torriti, Beccafumi, Milan 1998, p. 257, no. D33, reproduced (as Beccafumi).

This fascinating double-sided drawing is one of forty-three leaves from a sketchbook that was dismantled in 1965 when it was with Thomas Agnew and Sons (see Provenance). The sketches, which vary in media, some in red or black chalk, others in pen and ink and wash, include landscapes, figural and architectural motifs and studies for portraits. The pages of the album are now scattered in prominent collections across Europe and the United States. The sketchbook, though given entirely to Domenico Beccafumi in 1935 (see Literature), has subsequently been the topic of much scholarly debate, in terms of authorship.

We are grateful to Dott. Marco Ciampolini for proposing the attribution to Prospero Antichi, on the basis of digital images. For examples of drawings by Prospero Antichi, see Marco Ciampolini, Drawing in Renaissance and Baroque Siena: 16th- and 17th-Century Drawings from Sienese Collections, exh. cat., Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, et al., 2002–3, pp. 66–70.