Giulio Cesare Procaccini

With Galerie Katrin Bellinger, Munich; acquired in 1995 

Overall good condition, not laid down. Tiny loss to the lower margin underneath one of Judith's feet. A shadow at the upper margin, due to old glue on the verso, to fix the drawing. Three small black ink stains and a small grey ink scattered- visible in the reproduction. Trace of a black chalk margin around top and right edge of the drawing. Sold mounted and framed in a modern wooden gilded frame
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This intense red chalk study by Giulio Cesare Procaccini does not relate to any known painting by the artist.  Stylistically, however, it is very close to two other studies:  a double-sided sheet with a male nude on the recto, now at the Centro Alessandro Maggiori, Monte San Giusto, and a study for a dead Christ, formerly in the Kunsthalle, Bremen.¹  The latter drawing, destroyed in the Second World War but known from a photograph, was dated by Nancy Ward Neilson to the second decade of the seventeenth century.  The traditional attribution to Parmigianino on the verso is quite fascinating, considering the strong influence that he (and also, of course, Correggio) exerted on Giulio Cesare.  This influence seems particularly noticeable in the early 1610s, a date that also seems appropriate for the present sheet on other stylistic grounds.  We are grateful to Nancy Ward Neilson and Giulio Bora for confirming the attribution to Giulio Cesare on the basis of a photograph, and for confirming that they both feel that the dating proposed here is stylistically plausible.

1. Nancy Ward Neilson, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Disegnatore, Busto Arsizio 2004, nos 99 and 10 respectively, reproduced figs 129 and 128.