Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Il Baciccio

The study on the recto of this sheet is preparatory for a putto in Gaulli's painting of a Bacchanale, dated to circa 1685-90 by Francesco Petrucci.  The child is seated quietly in the lower right corner of the composition, beneath a circle of dancing nymphs inspired by Poussin's Dance to the Music of Time.¹  Six other preparatory drawings have been identified in relation to the painting, mostly in Gaulli's more familliar and typical pen and wash technique: a compositional study in the Louvre, a study for a male figure in the Ashmolean, Oxford and four sheets of studies in the Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf.² 

This putto was clearly a popular motif for Gaulli, as he later appears in a painting dated circa 1690, dominating the entire composition, seated in a landscape with a river beyond.³   Furthermore, in Gaulli's Adoration of the Golden Calf, of circa 1695-1700, a similar child is depicted, although this time facing the viewer and with both hands clutching the drapery above his rounded stomach.⁴

1.  The Bacchanale is known in two versions, one in the collection of E.G. Klabin, São Paolo, Brazil, the other in the Museum der Universität, Würzburg.  See  F. Petruzzi, Baciccio, Giovan Battista Gaulli (1639-1709), Rome 2009, cat. nos. D54 and D54a, pp. 603-4

2. See, respectively: F. Petruzzi, op.cit., cat. no. D.541; Ashmolean inv. no. 1970.56,  H. Macandrew and D. Graf, 'Baciccio's Later Drawings...' in Master Drawings, 1972, no. 3, pp. 248-9, plate 9a and D. Graf, Die Handzeichnungen von Guglielmo Cortese und Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Düsseldorf 1976, cat. nos. 244-247, vol. II, pp. 96-7, vol. I figs. 322-328

3. Sold London, Sotheby's, 6 July 2006, lot 215.  See  F. Petruzzi, op.cit., cat. no. D58, p. 608

4. Museum of Viña del Mar, Chile; see Petruzzi, op.cit., cat. no. D70, p. 621