Carlo Maratti

John and Alice Steiner;
Maud Fraker;
Sale, London, Christie's, 10 July 2001, lot 66

Santa Barbara, Museum of Art, and elsewhere, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of John and Alice Steiner, 1986, no. 28;
Atlanta, Krannert Art Museum, Italian and Netherlandish Drawings from the Steiner Collection, 22 March-27 February, 1994, checklist no. 24 (from a label on the backing of the drawing)

Overall the drawing is fresh and in very good condition. The ink has bitten through the paper in the head of the figure in the foreground to the left. The rest of the sheet is in a remarkably good state.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This very handsome drawing by Maratta could be a preliminary study for a frontispiece or for an etching.  Although it does not clearly relate to any known work, its complex and learned subject is in keeping with the allegories such as the one he designed for the frontispiece for the Fasti Senenses, ab Academia Intronatorum editi, for the erudite Sienese society of the Accademia degli Intronati.  The general composition is comparable to Maratta's Allegory of the Old and New Dispensations, now in the Metropolitan Museum.¹  The latter was recognized by Peter Dreyer as the preparatory drawing in reverse for the engraving by Giovanni Girolamo Frezza, dated 1708.  When writing the catalogue of the Steiner collection, Carmen Roxanne Robbin noted however that the date of 1708 appears to be too late for the style of the present sheet and she writes: 'However the flowing, relaxed but controlled delineation of the Steiner sheet is much closer to his earlier work, such as his drawing in the Morgan Library (inv.no.iv,183) of the Immaculate Virgin with Four Male Saints.' ²

The present drawing includes a number of references to the work of Raphael and the Stanza della Segnatura and in particular to the School of Athens.  This influence appears clearly also in a further drawing by Maratta, the famous modello, The School of Design, used for Dorigny' s etching, as was first noticed by Philip Pouncey, and now at Chatsworth.³  The foreground figure of a kneeling man in the process of drawing a star in a circle with a compass is exactly the mirror image of the figure kneeling in the foreground of the Chatsworth drawing.  The present sheet is probably an early study for the depiction of an allegorical theme for an Academy of Philosophers and Poets.  Through comparison with the portraits in Raphael's School of Athens and the Parnassus, Robbin has recognized the figure of Homer as the man crowned in the background and Socrates as the second figure from the left just above the main central figures. These three allegorical figures in the foreground could represent the fields of knowledge or science, possibly Rhetoric in the center, Geometry on the left and Grammar in the lower right corner.

1. See J. Bean, 17^th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1979, no. 280, reproduced

2. See J.K. Westin and Robert H. Westin, Carlo Maratti and His Contemporaries, exhibition catalogue, Pennsylvania State University, 1975, no. 32, pp. 53-57

3. See M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings, Roman and Neapolitan Schools, London 1994, p. 128, no. 251 reproduced