From Taddeo to Tiepolo: The Dr. John O’Brien Collection of Old Master Drawings

From Taddeo to Tiepolo: The Dr. John O’Brien Collection of Old Master Drawings

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 218. The Flight into Egypt.

Giovanni Andrea Donducci, called Mastelletta

The Flight into Egypt

Auction Closed

January 27, 09:35 PM GMT

Estimate

6,000 - 8,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Giovanni Andrea Donducci, called Mastelletta

Bologna 1575 - 1655

The Flight into Egypt


Pen and brown ink and wash

195 by 305 mm; 7 3/4 by 12 in

With John Baskett and Richard Day, Exhibition of Italian Old Master Drawings, London 1971, no. 14;
with Herbert E. Feist Gallery, New York;
John Hardy, New York,
from whom acquired, 1972
Keith Roberts, Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions, London,' The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXIII, no. 825 (1971), p. 754

Drawings by Mastelletta are extremely rare. This whimsical and imaginative depiction of The Flight into Egypt is reminiscent of the style of Ludovico Carracci. Elegant angels with swirling drapery and elongated wings encircle the Holy Family. The twirls in their attire are echoed in the branches of the tree and the billows of smoke in the distance. No direct connection can be made with any of the artist’s paintings, but the sheet is stylistically consistent with other drawings by Mastelleta.


Another landscape with The Flight into Egypt, formerly in the collections of Mariette (with his attribution to Mastelletta on the mount), the Comte de Fries and Tancred Borenius, was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London in 1938 (cat. No. 393). A drawing of The Preaching of St. John The Baptist, was sold at Sotheby’s, London, in 1995.1


1. Sale, London, Sotheby’s, 3 July 1995, lot 88