Attributed to Jan de Momper Antwerp 1617 - after 1687

C. Somoff, St. Petersburg (according to a blue ink inscription, verso) 

Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5, cat. no. 16

A series of at least eighteen drawings of coast landscapes and harbour scenes by this same, distinctive hand are known, including seven sheets in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, six in the collection of the Duke of Roxburghe at Floors Castle, and two in Hamburg (see Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5 for further information).  In the past, these drawings have been attributed to various 17th-century artists, most frequently Abraham Casembroot, Filippo Napoletano and Remigio Cantagallina.  Four of the eighteen drawings, including the present sheet, do, however, bear the signature Momper, and in one case (one of the drawings at Floors), this name is preceded by the initial I.  These signatures may perhaps be later additions, but one of the later members of the Momper family, Jan III, is supposed to have been working in Rome in 1675, and did paint Mediterranean coast landscapes (such as the example in the Prado, reproduced Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5, p. 58, fig. 16.3), so it seems perfectly reasonable to attribute the drawings to that artist.  Given the St. Petersburg provenance of the Unicorno drawing, it may well at some stage have been together with the other drawings by the same hand that are now in the Hermitage.