Property from the Estate of Stanley Moss, Sold Without Reserve
Giulio Benso
A Burial or Disinterment Before a Crowd
No reserve
Estimate
3,000 - 4,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from the Estate of Stanley Moss, Sold Without Reserve
Giulio Benso
Pieve del Tecco 1601 - 1668
A Burial or Disinterment Before a Crowd
Pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk, within partial brown ink framing lines
371 by 548 mm; 14 ⅝ by 21 ⅝ in.
Sale, London, Sotheby's, 3 November 1988, lot, 156,
where acquired
As an adolescent, Benso left his native town of Pieve di Teco for Genoa, where he made such a strong impression on Giovanni Carlo Doria, the city's most important and wealthy patron, that he immediately entered the workshop of Giovanni Battista Paggi (1554-1627), the leading artist of the early seventeenth-century Genoese school. Consequently, the young Benso came to be influenced by numerous artists, not only Paggi and his master, Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585), but also Simon Vouet (1590-1649) and Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574-1625), who were active in Genoa at the end of the second decade of the 17th century. While still with Paggi (according to his seventeenth-century biographer, Raffaele Soprani), Benso produced "bizarre sketches of great number and variety, as he had a fertile mind along with a lively and vigorous imagination”.1 As the present work attests, Benso was a highly spirited draughtsman and he earned particular renown in Genoa as the city’s foremost painter of quadrature - illusionist architectural perspectives with spectacular foreshortenings, such as those in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato, Genoa, executed by the artist circa 1639.2
Whilst the subject depicted in the present work remains enigmatic, the presence of such a large crowd of surprised onlookers suggests someone of importance, possibly a saint or a ruler. One of the most striking aspects of the drawing is the juxtaposition of the dynamic poses and frenetic energy of the figures moving the earth, with the calm and relaxed poses of the oversize figures at the left and right edges of the sheet. Benso has also masterfully emphasized the depth of the crowd through the application of wash along a diagonal that recedes from the right foreground to the left background.
1 R. Soprani, Le vite de pittori, scoltori et architetti genovesi; e de' forestieri che in Genova operarono, Genoa 1674, p. 280
2 For a comprehensive summary of Benso's life and career see M. Newcome Schleier, "Giulio Benso," Paragone, 1979, pp. 27-40