ANONYME ITALIEN, ECOLE BOLONAISE, VERS 1600 | Christ holding the reed

Stefan von Licht (1880-1932), Vienne (L. 789b) ; 
Vente anonyme, Londres, Sotheby's, 6 mars 1973, n°318 (comme Cavedone) ;
Acquis à cette vente par Mathias Polakovits (1921-1987), Paris (L. 3561) ; 
Sa vente, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, M^e Couturier Nicolay, 4 mars 1988, n°144 (comme Faccini) ; 
Acquis à cette vente.

Rennes, 2012, n°14 (notice par Nicolas Schwed)

Bologna has always been an important centre of artistic production. The renowned University made the city a focal point for a variety of intellectual activities and a centre for humanist and scientific studies.   A revolutionary change in the way the city’s cultural energy was expressed artistically occurred, however, with the advent, around the 1580s, of the Carracci.   Although finished drawings by the Bolognese mannerists of the generation before the Carracci were widely collected from an early date, towards the end of the century there was a significant increase in the production of impressive, finished sheets, often apparently executed to satisfy the requirement of collectors.   With the rise of the Carracci and the tradition that they instigated, more drawings seem to have been created self-consciously, and regarded as works of art in their own right, even if they also often served as preparatory studies for paintings.  

The Adrien study is an example of such a sheet.  It is a large drawing, executed in oiled charcoal, in which the single figure dominates the space with indisputable gravitas, occupying the full length of the sheet.   The powerful oiled charcoal medium that the artist has chosen to employ increases the sense of three-dimensionality, and the bold strokes of white heightening enhance the dramatic effect through the interplay of light and dark.  The medium is applied in a skilful and painterly manner, and the geometric forms of the figure make of this drawing a timeless and intense image.  

The drawing has previously been associated with Giacomo Cavedone (1577-1660) and with Pietro Faccini (circa 1562-1602), neither of these a surprising attribution.   Nicolas Schwed, in his Rennes exhibition catalogue entry, has observed that the frontal view of the figure of Christ in the present sheet is reminiscent of the standing Christ as the man of sorrows, frescoed by Lodovico Carracci around 1592, in the ex-Oratorio dei Filippini, Bologna.  Schwed has also stressed that the distinctive combination of media seen here, oiled charcoal heightened with white, can be found in other sheets by Lodovico and his followers, rightly citing for comparison two impressive early sheets by Lodovico that share both the technique and the monumentality that distinguish the Adrien drawing.  The first of these, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, is a Study for a decorative figure, connected with the decoration of Palazzo Fava,¹ and the second is the Study for Jael and Sisera on the recto of a double sided sheet in the Ambrosiana, Milan.²

1. B. Bohn, Ludovico Carracci and the Art of Drawing, Turnhout 2004, p. 136, no. 30 reproduced

2. Ibid., p. 152, no. 44, reproduced (recto)