Giulio Campi

A young shepherd seated on a tree trunk, three dogs beside him, figures beyond and houses in the background

Auction Closed

January 26, 04:31 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 40,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Distinguished Private Collection

Giulio Campi

Cremona circa 1505 - 1572

A young shepherd seated on a tree trunk, three dogs beside him, figures beyond and houses in the background

Black chalk with traces of white heightening, indented for transfer;

the verso blackened, and with some figure sketches;

bears inscription in pencil, verso: Niccoló dell' Abbate

335 by 188 mm; 13¼by 7⅜in

Sale, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 2006, lot 5;
Sale, New York, Sotheby's, 27 January 2010, lot 23,
where purchased by the present owner

G. Bora, 'La decorazione cinquecentesca nella chiesa della Sante Margherita e Pelagia: il committente e l'artista', in La chiesa delle Sante Margherita e Pelagia. Storia e restauro, (P. Bonometti and G. Colalucci eds.), Cremona 2008, p. 93, reproduced p. 83, fig. 22, note 29

Professor Giulio Bora was the first to recognize, at the time of the 2006 sale, that this very finished study by Giulio Campi – almost a bozzetto – is preparatory for the left side of the frescoed apse with a group of shepherds in the church of Saints Margherita and Pelagia, Cremona, painted around 1547, when the church was rebuilt and decorated ex novo (a date recorded in an inscription on the façade).¹ A drawing representing The Adoration of the Shepherds, now in the British Museum, was identified by Professor Bora as Campi's preparatory study for the very damaged central section of the same apse, of which only a fragment survives.² The strong stylistic influences of both Correggio and Parmigianino are very evident in both the British Museum drawing and the present sheet. Two other finished studies by Giulio, The Raising of Lazarus and The Transfiguration, connected with his decoration of the lateral walls of the nave in the same church, are in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.³ Although originally catalogued as anonymous Parma School works, the Windsor drawings were independently recognized as the work of Giulio Campi by both Philip Pouncey and Giulio Bora.⁴

The present drawing is an important addition to this small group of finished compositional studies relating to the decoration of the whole church of Saints Margherita and Pelagia, a major commission that was entrusted to Giulio Campi by the humanist scholar Marco Girolamo Vida (1485-1566), with whom he worked on several occasions. Vida, Bishop of Alba, was the titular prior of the small church and was responsible for the whole project and for the iconographic sequence of the frescoes, which are based on episodes from the life of Christ. With his brother Antonio (1522-1587), Giulio frescoed the entire interior.

^1. We are grateful to Giovanni Renzi for kindly informing us about Professor Bora's publication (see Literature)

^2. London, British Museum, inv. no. 1941,1108.14; I segni dell' arte, Il Cinquecento da Praga a Cremona, exhib. cat., Cremona, Museo Civico, 1997, pp. 248-9, reproduced

^3. Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, RCIN 991125, 991126

^4. Exhib. cat., Cremona, op. cit., nos. 76 and 78