Annibale Carracci

Possibly Conte Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693), Bologna;

bears an unidentified collector's mark on the mount, verso, (L.537/L.1149) (CFC (?) below a coronet, probably that of an Emilian duke of the 17th century (according to Loisel (loc. cit.) possibly connected with the Coccapani family, with shelfmark, Fol.M.II.37/Mappe XV, 1S/15);

Pierre Crozat (1665-1740), Paris, his inscribed number, partly erased, recto: 57,

his sale, Paris, 10 April - 13 May 1741 (part of lot 512, "'Paysages de Louis, Annibal,& Augustin Carrache'. Neuf [Drawings] idem: autres Paisages"), bought by Mariette,

Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1774), Paris, with part of his mount (L.1852),

his sale, Paris, Basan, Catalogue Raisonné des différens objets de curiosités dans les Sciences et Arts, qui composoient le Cabinet de feu M^r Mariette.., 13 January 1776, lot 307 ( "CARRACHE. [Annibal] Bolog. Autre Etude d'un gros Arbre faite dela même manière . Une très-bonne copie de ce Dessin faite à tromper, par M. Mariette"),"; Basan for Paillet;

Alexandre Joseph Paillet (1743-1814);

sale, London, Christie's, 8 April 1986, lot 63;

sale, London, Christie's, 9 April 1990, lot 32,

acquired at this sale by Bruno de Bayser for a private collection, France;

sale, New York, Christie's, 28 January 1999, lot 23;

Private collection, Vermont;

with W.M. Brady & Co., New York, Master Drawings, 1530-1920, 2012, no. 5, reproduced (entry by Nicholas Turner),

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 33 (entry by Nicholas Turner)

F. Viatte et al., Le cabinet d'un grand amateur P.-J.Mariette, exhib. cat., Paris, Reunion des Musées Nationaux, 1967, p. 171, under no. 288;

R. Bacou, I grandi disegni italiani della collezione Mariette al Louvre di Parigi, Milan, 1981, p. 16;

J. Labbe & L. Bicart-See, La collection Saint-Morys au Cabinet des Dessins du Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1987, p. 522;

C. Loisel, Musée du Louvre, Départe­ment des Arts Graphiques: Inventaire général des dessins ital­iens, vol. 7, Ludovico, Agostino, Annibale Carracci, Paris 2004, p. 296, under no. 726, p. 317, under no. 795;

P. Rosenberg, C.B. Bailey, S. Welsh Reed, La vente Mariette, Le catalogue illustré par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Milan 2011, p. 50;

P. Rosenberg, Les Dessins de la collection Mariette. Ecole italienne et espagnole, Paris 2019, Vol. I, p. 272, no. I 373, reproduced

L. Trezzani, 'Annibale Carracci, La vestale Tuccia in un paesaggio', Giuliano Briganti, February 2016, https://giulianobriganti.it/index.php?id=348

Annibale Carracci, admired for his innovative studies from life conveying a realistic vision of human form, turned to nature for his artistic inspiration. He observed the world around him, and revolutionized the way artists perceived the so called 'genre subjects', giving them the same importance and grandeur that his contemporaries applied when representing themes that were traditionally considered more significant.

In the superb Nixon drawing, Annibale devotes his entire attention to the pictorial rendering of this majestic 'portrait' of a tree, seen in isolation, seeking to capture the essence of its flamboyant, varied shape and movement. The drawing must have been executed not only as an exercise done for the artist’s own pleasure, but also in response to the challenge of recording this subject, perhaps eventually to be integrated into one of his paintings. The Nixon drawing is almost unique in Annibale's drawn oeuvre in focusing on a single tree that does not form an integral part of one of the artist’s landscapes of the Emilian countryside,¹ a subject that Annibale had already mastered in his drawings by the early 1580s, but only occasionally included in his painted work.

Annibale's style is here characterized by the speed and variety of expression in the application of the pen and ink, with subtle changes in the density of the ink and in the pressure of the pen used to create a richly tonal effect, although no wash has been applied. The skilful description of the foliage, with multiple looping pen strokes interspersed with quick, parallel ones to convey the swaying in the breeze, contrasts with the more balanced and solid structure of the twisted branches, enriched by parallel hatchings and cross-hatchings, especially evident towards the bottom of the tree, which suggest weight, and clearly defined areas of light and shade.

The artist began here with a preliminary underdrawing in black chalk, before building the drawing up with fluent and confident strokes of pen and ink, along the way making numerous, subtle changes and pentimenti, though these are not immediately evident. There are also indications of clouds to the top left of the sheet, lightly drawn in black chalk, which strengthen the idea that this tree is sketched from life. As Nicholas Turner noted (see Exhibited), a likely reason for not completing the clouds, which are often included in Annibale’s other landscape studies of this time, may have been to keep uncluttered the motif of the majestic tree. Turner also points out that this practice of lightly drafting the subject in black chalk and then working it up with ‘more carefully wrought pen work’ is characteristic of Anni­bale's working method about 1600, both in his figure studies and in his landscapes.

The Nixon drawing has been dated stylistically by Nicholas Turner to the artist's early Roman period, 1595-1601, and he singles it out as 'one of the finest of Annibale's studies of landscape, particu­larly remarkable for the boldness of its composition, the forcefulness and economy of its handling, and the unusually fine condition of the sheet.' As he also notes, Annibale's early Roman landscape studies reveal the lingering influence on him of sixteenth-century Venetian landscape drawings by artists such as Titian and Domenico Campagnola; just as in those Venetian models, Annibale defined space and form in pen and ink, without the mediation of wash, the untouched paper indicating areas of highlight and the passages of hatching and cross-hatching defining the darks and midtones. Annibale would have seen the works of Titian and his fellow Venetians at first hand around 1580 when, encouraged by his cousin Lodovico (1555-1619), he ventured on a study trip, first to Parma to study Correggio, and then to Venice.²

The attribution of the Nixon drawing to Annibale and its dating to circa 1600 has also recently been confirmed by Carel van Tuyll.³ Furthermore, it carries an old attribution to carracci, and has an immensely distinguished and impressive provenance, probably starting with the collection of the Bolognese biographer and erudite, count Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693). Later, the drawing was in two of the most important and exclusive collections of eighteenth-century France: those of the famous banker Pierre Crozat, and of the man who can plausibly be considered the greatest drawings connoisseur of all, Pierre Jean Mariette (see Provenance).

Even more extraordinarily, Mariette so appreciated the drawing that he made a copy of it when it was in the possession of his friend Pierre Crozat, and then went on to acquire the original for himself at the dispersal of Crozat's collection in 1741. The copy (fig. 1), now preserved at the Louvre, and the present drawing, on which the copy is based, were sold together in the same lot in the Mariette sale in 1775.⁴ The fact that both these drawings have survived, living proof of the admiration of these two extraordinary collectors, is a remarkable story on its own, but is also a testimony of the appreciation through the centuries for this bold and imposing image, which so clearly demonstrates Annibale's power of observation and technical bravura, and exemplifies his credo that art could portray reality.

For a drawing of a tree and branches by Annibale’s brother Agostino Carracci (1557-1602), see lot 44.

For other sheets formerly in the collections of Pierre Crozat and Pierre Jean Mariette see lots 8, 38 and 40.

^1.A study by Annibale of Two Trees, now at the Louvre (inv. no. 7484), executed in the same media, has been associated by Turner to the present study and dated to the same period; see Loisel, loc. cit.; Carel van Tuyll believes the Louvre study to be earlier than the present sheet. The Louvre drawing was part of the same lot in the Mariette sale (see Provenance) 

^2.D. DeGrazia Bohlin, Prints and related Drawing by the Carracci Family. A catalogue Raisonné, exhib. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1979, pp. 508-509 (letter from Annibale to his cousin Ludovico, dated 18 April 1580)

^3.We are grateful to Carel van Tuyll for confirming the attribution to Annibale from an image (email of 6 November 2025)

^4.Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no 30880 (the drawing has the Mariette mount with the cartouche inscribed: ANN.CARRACI, P.-J. Mariette 1724); see Loisel, op. cit., pp. 316-17, cat. 795, ill.; in the copy of the Crozat catalogue annoted by Mariette, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, Mariette has written: 'dont bel arbre disegnato da me'.