PLACIDO COSTANZI | Study of a female figure leaning to her left

Adrien Manglard (1695-1760), Rome (avec feuillet numeroté, à la plume et encre brune, representant le prix du dessin à l'exposition publique de la collection de l'artiste, après sa mort : No 777 - Z - 50)¹ ;
Vente anonyme, Versailles, Hôtel des ventes, M^e Chapelle, 21 mars 1982, n°4.

Rennes, 2012, n°24 (notice par Catherine Loisel)

Laid down on a card backing which has in turn been hinged to a modern mount. There are some scattered abrasions throughout the sheet and a small crease to the right half of the upper edge. There is some minor surface dirt in places and some horizontal creases to the lower centre of the sheet, possibly created during the manufacturing of the paper. The black chalk medium remains predominantly fresh throughout and the image strong. Sold unframed.
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This fine sheet, executed in the artist’s characteristic combination of black and white chalk on a distinctive blue-grey prepared paper, is a preparatory study by the 18^th Century Roman artist, Placido Costanzi, for the central figure of Tabitha in his painting of St. Peter resurrecting Tabitha (Fig.1). Though the painting was originally commissioned for St. Peter’s, Rome, it was subsequently replaced with a mosaic based precisely on Costanzi’s composition, with the picture later moved to its current location, the Church of Santa Maria dei Angeli, Rome.

The Adrien sheet is accompanied by a further surviving study from this particular commission, for the draped figure of St. Peter, which is executed in an identical combination of media and today housed in a private collection.² Interestingly these and other surviving sheets³ unrelated to this commission, but similarly drawn in black chalk on blue-grey prepared paper, can be dated on stylistic grounds to the 1730s and 1740s, seemingly predating the painting, which is dated 1757, by some 20 years. A further anomaly seems to occur when one attempts to account for the discrepancy that exists between the dating of the painting and payments that Costanzi received for this commission, between 1736-1740.

Indeed additional documentary evidence that further strengthens the argument for St. Peter resurrecting Tabitha being an earlier work than Costanzi’s 1757 dating suggests, was first proposed by the American art historian and scholar of 18^th Century Roman painting, Anthony M. Clark, in 1968. Clark shed light on the fascinating existence of Pier Leone Ghezzi’s 1740 caricature of Costanzi, housed in the Vatican Library,⁴ which notes that the altarpiece depicting St. Peter resurrecting Tabitha was unveiled in St. Peter’s on Holy Saturday of April, 1740. Clark goes on to note that Costanzi is reported to have retouched the altarpiece in 1746 and though totally unproven, it seems probable that the artist continued to touch up this painting until he finally dated it some two decades after its original conception.

^1.  For further information on the Manglard provenance, see Les collections du comte d'Orsay: dessins du Musée du Louvre, exh. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1983, p. 87 

^2. Op. cit., Rennes, p. 85, fig. 2, reproduced

^3. See for instance: C. Loisel-Legrand, “Placido Costanzi a Siena”, Prospettiva, no. 80, 1995, p. 90, figs. 1-2, reproduced

^4. A. Clark, “An Introduction to Placido Costanzi”, Paragone, May 1968, p. 46