Attributed to Agostino Carracci Bologna 1557 - 1602 Parma

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Description

Agostino Carracci
landscape with a music-making couple
pen and brown ink

Provenance

With Seiferheld and Co., New York;
with Bianchini Gallery, New York;
Mr. and Mrs. Lester Avnet, New York;
anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., 3 June 1980, lot 21, reproduced (as Bolognese School, 17th c.)

Exhibited

Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, et al., Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Lester Avnet, 1969-1970, cat. no. 10, reproduced (as Annibale Carracci, the attribution credited to A.E. Popham)

Literature

C. Loisel, Ludovico, Agostino et Annibale Carracci, Inventaire general des desins italiens, vol. VII, Paris 2004, p. 75, reproduced p. 76, ill. no. 109

Catalogue Note

First given to Annibale Caracci by Popham (see Exhibited), this pastoral scene was recently identified by Catherine Loisel, who has examined it in person, as from the hand of Agostino (see Literature). She connects it with another version of the same subject in the Louvre, inv. no. 8058 (Loisel, op. cit., reproduced p. 204, no. 392), and publishes the present work as the original from which the Louvre drawing was copied.

A substantial group of landscape drawings associated with the Carracci family and their followers, have long been admired for their seemingly effortless depiction of the natural surroundings. In the past few years there has been a concerted effort by a number of scholars to reassess the works and rationally sort out the various hands, the most recent by Loisel in the essay at the beginning of her catalogue (Loisel op. cit,. pp. 75-81).