Carlo Maratti

Possibly Giovan Pietro Bellori;
Padre Sebastiano Resta;
Lord John Somers (L.2981), his numbering in pen and brown ink: i.161;
Jonathan Richardson, Sen^r (L.2184), on his mount with his shelf marks on the reverse: 6.3./J.45./CC.1./ C., and his attribution in pen and ink :...Carlo Maratti

Laid down on the Richardson mount. Overall in good condition. Slight small silverfish losses especially around the lower edges of the drawing. To the lower left near the base with the name a small loss, due also to silverfish. Another similar loss to the right on the right edge near the laurel swag.
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This newly discovered drawn portrait of Annibale Carracci by Maratti is the preparatory study for the print that heads the life of Annibale in Giovan Pietro Bellori's Le vite de' pittori, scultori e architetti, first published in 1672 (fig.1).  This celebrated book, dedicated to the powerful Jean-Baptiste Colbert, which begins with the life of Annibale and concludes with that of Poussin, was to be followed by a second part, planned by Bellori but never actually published.¹ 

 Annibale and Maratti were both regarded by Bellori as Raphael's artistic heirs, and he admired and revered them greatly as the most influential exponents and perpetuators of the classical tradition.  Bellori was one of the most fascinating minds of his time, famous as an advocate and theorist of Roman classicism.  He seems to have finished writing Annibale's life already by 1660, although it was not published until much later.

The present portrait, drawn in an oval, is meticulously finished with very assured strokes and cross-hatchings in black chalk.  It is surrounded by a drawn red chalk frame resting on a small pedestal, prominently decorated with a painter's palette and brushes.  The right side of the oval frame is left plain to indicate an alternative decorative choice.  The execution in two colours of chalk creates a striking contrast between the actual portrait and the decorative surrounding.  Although the drawing is indented for transfer, and was clearly conceived to be engraved, the strong pictorial effect created by the choice of media suggests Maratti must also have intended to create a work of art in its own right.  Even the name of Annibale Carracci, inscribed within the frame in capital letters, seems initially to have been reversed, ready for engraving, and then rewritten so as to be legible by someone looking at the drawing. The print, in reverse, was engraved for 'Le vite..' by Albert Clouwert (Antwerp 1636 - 1679 Naples), a pupil of Cornelis Bloemart, who was known as a skilful portrait engraver.  It was made no later than 1670, when it was mentioned by Bellori in a letter to the abbot Claude Nicaise,² and the drawing could therefore date from any time between about 1660 and 1670.

The traditional attribution to Maratti is inscribed in pen and brown ink by Jonathan Richardson on his characteristic mount.  Prior to this, the sheet was in the collection of the well-known connoisseur and drawings collector, Padre Resta, a friend of both Bellori and Maratti.  Resta in fact bought Bellori's collection of drawings³ and although there is no concrete proof, it seems highly likely that Bellori had kept the present drawing in his own collection from the time it was made to illustrate his great book.  In the Lansdowne manuscript, today in the British Library, Richardson transcribed Resta's comments on the inventory of his collection, and under the number i:161, which appears on a page otherwise relating to works by Annibale and Lodovico Carracci, we read: Carol. Maratta deliniavit. 

As Donatella Sparti has noted, the likeness of Annibale that was reproduced in Bellori's famous pubilication, and which became one of the most widely replicated images of the artist, ultimately derives from a small oval painted self-portrait of Annibale aged about thirty-five, which was once owned by Bellori but is now lost.⁴ This small painting was one of Bellori's most beloved possessions, which he retained until his death.  He had acquired it as part of an inheritance from his uncle and mentor Francesco Angeloni, who also owned a vast collection of about six hundred drawings by Annibale, mainly relating to the artist's great Galleria Farnese paintings.  Although Bellori was the sole beneficiary of Angeloni’s will, the inheritance was successfully challenged by Angeloni's brothers, who immediately dispersed the collection, but Bellori did manage to save a few prized items, including the famous Annibale self-portrait.  

In her 2001 article, Sparti postulated that a variety of other portraits of Annibale probably derive from the lost oval painting once owned by Bellori, rather than from Clouwert's reversed engraving in the 'Vite’.  The discovery of the present sheet, however, provides another possible source for the various images of Annibale, executed in different media and in reverse to Clouwert's print, some or all of which may have been copied from this drawing, rather than from the painting.  The works in question include the woodcut portrait of Annibale used by Malvasia to illustrate his Felsina (Bologna 1678), and the much later drawing in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, executed by Antonio Creccolini, one of the artists employed in Rome circa 1718/19-1724 by Nicola Pio, when gathering portraits for his own Lives.⁵  A red chalk copy after the oval portrait, without any surrounding frame and most probably after Clouwert's print, is in Weimar.⁶

Another interesting link in the chain of connections between Maratti, Bellori and Annibale is that Maratti and Bellori were both closely involved in the lengthy project, begun in 1674, to erect a monument in honour of Annibale in the Pantheon -- a monument that was dismantled in the early 19th century.  The portrait-bust on Annibale's monument in the Pantheon, carved by Paolo Naldini, and now in the Protomoteca Capitolina, Rome, is also based on the same likeness.⁷ Of particular relevance to the present sheet is the engraving by Pietro Aquila after Maratti's lost design for an imaginary funerary monument to Annibale, a print that was published, with accompanying Latin verses by Bellori, in the Galerie Farnesianae Icones (1677).  In this lost design, Maratti has reused the same oval likeness of Annibale that we see in the present sheet, which appears in reverse in Aquila's engraving (fig. 2). 

1. C. Dempsey, 'Le vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti moderni' di Giovan Pietro Bellori, in L'Idea del Bello, exhib. cat., Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 2000, vol. I, p. 99
2. D.L. Sparti:  'Giovan Pietro Bellori and Annibale Carracci's Self-Portraits. From the 'Vite' to the Artist's Funerary Monument' ^, Mitteilungen des Kunstihistoriches Institutes in Florenz,  45. Bd., H. 1/2 (2001) p. 67,  p. 90, note 61
3. For information on Bellori as a collector of drawings see S. Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, 'La Collezione di Grafica di Giovan Pietro Bellori', Hommage au Dessin, Rimini 1996, pp. 357-378
 4. D.L. Sparti, op. cit., p. 64 and p. 77 for Evelina Borea's suggestion of the dating for the lost painting to 1595, when Annibale moved to Rome
5. Ibid., figs. 8 and 9
6. Weimar, inv. no. KK 9547; U.V. Fisher Pace, Die italienischen Zeichnungen, vol. 1, Köln Weimar Wien 2008, p. 116,  no. 22 (as Annibale Carracci Kopie)
7. D.L. Sparti, op. cit., pp. 81-82, and fig. 15