Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio

Private collection;

sale, Munich, Karl & Faber, 10 December 1969, lot 145 (as Ludovico Gimignani);

Herbert List (1903-1975), Munich (L.4063);

Wolfgang Ratjen, Munich and Vaduz (1943-1997) (inv. R 66); Ratjen Foundation, Vaduz, until 2000,

David Lachenmann;

from whom acquired by Diane A. Nixon

Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, et al., Italienische Zeichnungen des 16. - 18. Jahrhunderts. Eine Ausstellung zum Andenken an Herbert List, 1977-78, no. 88, reproduced (entry by Dieter Graf);

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 45, reproduced (entry by Anne Varick Lauder);

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. 48

D. Graf, Die Handzeichnungen von Guglielmo Cortese und Giovanni Gaulli, Düsseldorf 1976, vol. I, p. 141, under no. 438

A handsome example of Gaulli's draughtsmanship at its best, the Nixon drawing illustrates an episode from Virgil's Aeneid (8: 608 - 625), when Venus, amid clouds, presents to her son Aeneas the cuirass and weapons forged by Vulcan, her husband, before the Trojan hero departs for war. Aeneas, son of Anchises, a Trojan prince, is considered in Roman mythology to be a celebrated ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. In the drawing he is shown standing center-right, elegantly posed while conversing with Venus, who is indicating his new cuirass hanging from a large, ancient oak tree, while holding his shield with her right hand. The goddess is semi-reclining, her body facing outwards towards the viewer. Nearby, in the left foreground, a pair of frolicking putti are playing with Aeneas' plumed helmet and spear. To the right and further back, a personification of a river, surely the Tiber, is observing the scene, probably anticipating Aeneas' fated victory and the founding of the Trojan settlement on the Tiber.

Although this sheet gives the appearance of a finished study, there are, as Lauder noted (see Exhibited) a number of relevant pentimenti, demonstrating that the artist was still working out the composition. For example, Aeneas is carrying two spears, one resting on his right shoulder the other on his left hand and arm, and to the far left of the composition we can also see a second pair of playing putti. It appears, because of the degree of finish, that the putti nearer to Aeneas probably represent Gaulli's final choice, showing that the artist preferred to concentrate the action more towards the centre of the sheet.

The graphic style of this drawing shows the highly effective and pictorial technique that Gaulli developed around 1675, at the time of one of his more important commissions, the interior decoration of the Jesuit church of Il Gesù, in Rome. This use of the media, employed by Gaulli especially in compositional drawings, sees a combination of the artist's skilful use of pen and brown ink, contrasted with an abundant application of fluid brown and grey wash, heightened with white, over black chalk, on light brown paper. The present sheet must also date from around that time and it is comparable to the known studies for the pendentives of the Jesuit church, preserved in the Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf.¹

Gaulli moved from his native Genoa to Rome in 1653 (or, according to some sources, 1657), and there, while still in his teens, entered the studio of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The impact of Bernini's genius is strongly felt in Gaulli's style, both drawn and painted. The latter’s reputation was established by his magnificent frescoes of Allegorical figures on the pendentives of the crossing in the church of St. Agnese in Agone, Piazza Navona, datable to 1666-1672.

As pointed out by Lauder in 2007, the present composition invites comparison with earlier treatments of the same theme, particularly the etching by Pietro Testa (1612-1650) of c. 1640, which Gaulli must have known.² The two compositions share a horizontal format, and a wooded setting with many of the same elements: the leather cuirass hanging from the tree, the putti playing with the helmet, and the river god to the right. The pastoral qualities of the scene would also seem to suggest a certain familiarity with the work of Gaulli's French contemporaries, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain; indeed, as Lauder notes, a compelling comparison can be made with Claude's pen-and-wash drawing of the same subject, at the Courtauld Institute, London, which is datable to a few years earlier, around 1670.³

^1.New York and Washington 2007, p. 119, note 7; for an illustration see M. Fagiolo dell'Arco, D. Graf, F. Petrucci, Giovanni Battista Gaulli. Il Baciccio, 1639-1709, exhib. cat., Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi, 1999-2000, figs. 11-12

^2. New York and Washington 2007, p. 116 and p. 119, note 4; Gaulli's debt to Testa was first remarked on by Graf in his catalogue of the Herbert List collection, loc. cit. (for the etching, see The Illustrated Bartsch, 45: 146, 24 (221))

^3.London, The Courtauld Gallery, inv. no. D.1965.XX.I