Gaetano Gandolfi

It is rare to find such an elaborate compositional drawing by Gaetano of a profane subject, but this theme evidently inspired his imagination. The present sheet, and its pendant representing The Birth of Venus,¹ clearly also caught the interest of Gaetano's son, Mauro Gandolfi: in a letter of 21 December 1819, now in the Biblioteca Comunale, Bologna, Mauro wrote to a friend and colleague, the Bolognese Luigi Sedazzi, then in Milan, and asked him to make every effort to trace the two drawings: ' ...fare ogni diligente ricerca, se esistono tuttora e presso di chi si trovino, due disegni di mio Padre all'apis rosso e gesso, rappresentanti l'uno il bagno di Diana, l'altro la nascita di Venere e Amore posti in una conchiglia sostenuta da vari Tritoni, con sul davanti degli amoretti che scherzano coi delfini. Servirono cotesti disegni a due quadri che dipinse per un Moscovita'.The first of the two paintings to which Mauro refers, "painted for a Muscovite" on the basis of the drawings in question, is now in a private collection, Brussels,² while the second was on the art market in 2010.³ Two bozzetti relating to the same paintings are also known. These were first published by Carlo Volpe, and were included in the important exhibition, Il Settecento emiliano, La Pittura, held in Bologna, Palazzi del Podestà e di Re Enzo, in 1979.⁴

Alongside the present work there exists a further preparatory drawing for Diana and Callisto, less ambitious in scale and executed in pen and wash over black chalk, which last appeared on the London art market in 2010.⁵

1. Sale, London, Sotheby's, 8 July 2015, lot 110

2. Biagi Maino, op. cit., 2002, cat. no. 32

3. Sale, New York, Christie's, 27 January 2010, lot 29

4. Biagi Maino, op.cit., 1995, cat. nos. 120 and 122, reproduced figs. 136 and 137

5. Sale, London, Christie's, 7 July 2010, lot 325