Pier Francesco Mola Coldrerio 1612 - 1666 Rome

This is a preparatory study for the figure of Saint Abdon in Mola's fresco The Martyrdom of SS. Abdon and Sennon, in the Roman church of S. Marco (see Richard Cocke, Pier Francesco Mola, Oxford 1972, cat. no. 57, illustration 56).  As Cocke points out, there is no record of payments to Mola for this fresco, but other surviving documents establish a dating around 1653-5, at the time of the redecoration of the church commissioned in 1653 by Niccoló Sagredo, who was the Venetian ambassador to Rome from 1650 to 1656.  It seems that the frescoes in the nave, of which the Martyrdom is one, must have been the first part of the redecoration undertaken.  Mola was paid for his altarpiece of St. Michael confounding Lucifer in the same church in December of 1655.  

In a letter to the present owner, Ann Sutherland Harris confirmed the attribution to Mola and wrote that this drawing is especially interesting for its link to the style of Pietro da Cortona.  Nicholas Turner, who also accepts the attribution to Mola, has pointed out that many pupils of Pietro da Cortona were involved in the redecoration of S. Marco, and that Mola's other preparatory studies for the fresco, particularly the black chalk compositional study in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe e dei Disegni, Rome, also show the strong influence of Cortona (see Pier Francesco Mola, exh. cat., Lugano, Museo Cantonale, et al., 1989-90, pp. 230-31, cat. no. III.16, reproduced).  A further study for this composition, in pen and ink and wash, is in the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.(see Diane De Grazia, 'A Group of Italian Drawings - Mostly Neapolitan - in the National Museum of American Art', in Master Drawings, vol. XXXI, no. 4, 1993, p. 351, reproduced p. 352, figs. 3 and 4).  Ursula Fischer Pace has also confirmed her acceptance of the attribution of the present drawing to Mola in a letter to the present owner.