* Gaetano Gandolfi San Matteo della Decima near Bologna 1734 - 1802 Bologna

bears unidentified collector' s mark, verso

Bologna, Palazzo di Re Enzo, Disegni del Settecento Bolognese, 1979, no. 49, reproduced.

P. Bagni, I Gandolfi, Affreschi, Dipinti, Bozzetti, Disegni, Padua 1992, p. 355, no. 334, reproduced;
D. B. Maino, Gaetano Gandolfi, Turin 1995, p. 388, under no. 164

This handsome study is preparatory for the left part of Gaetano Gandolfi's altarpiece representing the martyrdom of St. Eusebius (see Prisco Bagni, op. cit., p. 351, no. 330, reproduced). The painting was commissioned from Gaetano in 1784 by the Bishop of Alba, Langosco di Stroppiana, for the Duomo of Vercelli, of which he had been the Archdeacon.  The altarpiece was placed on the main altar of the chapel of St. Eusebius in 1785, and although it was removed in 1882 when the chapel was renovated, it is still in the Duomo in a room adjoining the sacristy.  Two drawings survive for the whole composition: one in red chalk in the Prado Museum in Madrid (see Manuela Mena Marqués, Dibujos Italianos del siglo XVIII y del siglo XIX, Madrid 1990, p.69) and the other by Ubaldo formerly on the London art market (see Flavia Ormond Fine Art, Italian Drawings, 1992, no. 29).  Mimi Cazort has noted that the commission was originally entrusted to Ubaldo but that after his death in 1781, Gaetano took over the project. In both compositional drawings the group of figures to the left is different from the final painting.  The present study shows the final development of the more effective and dramatic solution of turning the kneeling woman towards the viewer as she appears in the altarpiece.