- 539
Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Il Baciccio
Description
- Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Il Baciccio
- Christ and the Virgin with Saint Nicholas of Bari
- Pen and brown ink and brown and gray wash, over black chalk, squared in black chalk
Provenance
Literature
Francesco Petrucci, Baciccio, Rome 2009, p. 549, no. C.23.2, reproduced
Catalogue Note
This drawing and lot 545 are compositional studies related to Gaulli's commission from the Genoese banker Paolo Girolamo Torri for an altarpiece for his chapel in S. Maria Maddalena, Rome. The painting (fig. 1) was executed between 1697 and 1698 and is still in its original location. Of the two drawings, this one is the closer to the finished painting, being of a more vertical format and more restrained in its composition. The bishop's crozier and crown are still not included, which suggests that the iconography of this unusual subject had not been fully established.
The subject is an unusual one, carefully described by Robert Engass. St. Nicholas, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, condemned the Arians, provoking the members of the Council to take away the symbols of his office. The Virgin, however, approving of his defence of the Trinity, miraculously restored them to him.1
Other studies for the painting are in Düsseldorf and Oxford, and an oil modello is in the collection of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Rome.2
1. Robert Engass, The Painting of Baciccio, University Park 1964, p. 96
2. K. Wolfe, in Giovan Battista Gaulli Il Baciccio 1639-1709, exhib. cat., Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi, 1999-2000, p. 179, no. 39