PIER FRANCESCO MOLA | Study of a male head

Vente anonyme, Londres, Christie's, 26 novembre 1968, n^o99 ;
Londres, Hugh Squire ;
Sa vente, Catalogue of an interesting collection of Old Master Drawings formed by an eminent Connoisseur, Londres, Sotheby's, 28 juin 1979, n^o87 (sous Giacomo Cavedone) ; 
Acquis à cette vente par Jacques Petithory (1929-1992) ; 
Acquis par échange auprès de ce dernier en 1982.

Rennes, 2012, n°20 (notice par Catherine Loisel)

Laid down. To the left margin the are two very light brown water stains one at the bottom corner. There  are traces of very light staining at the top right corner . Three darker stains at the top of the head not very visible. Overall the media is strong, and the paper has retained is light blue color. Sold unframed.
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This impressive sheet was acquired by Monsieur Adrien from Jacques Petithory, three years after the latter had purchased it at the 1979 Sotheby’s sale of the distinguished collection of Hugh Squire.  The attribution to Mola, first proposed by Catherine Monbeig Goguel, and has been recently reconfirmed by Catherine Loisel.¹  Loisel in the Rennes catalogue emphasizes the artist’s ‘goût pour les études de têtes’, and also his talent for such studies, which expressed itself in a variety of works, made throughout his career.  

Loisel also observed that in general drawings of this type are rather rare, although the tradition of such heads studies, executed in coloured chalks and pastels, can be traced back to Federico Barocci (c.1535-1612) and to even earlier Lombard artists.  Barocci was also one of the first Italian painters to use the medium of oil for head studies executed on paper, both in preparation for his paintings and probably also for sale, as works of art in their own right.  A few of Barocci’s contemporaries, such as Annibale Carracci, produced similar studies, mostly as independent exercises, but it was with Florentine and Bolognese artists of the following generations that these very pictorial works in pastel and coloured chalks, or oil, would see their greatest popularity.   

Mola came from a family of craftsmen from Ticino.  He was the son of Giovanni Battista Mola (1585-1665), an architect and stuccoist who moved with his family to Rome in 1616, to take up the position of architect to the Camera Apostolica.  Very little is known of Mola’s early training in Rome, except that he was apprenticed to Prospero Orsi (1565/70-1635), an artist from Ticino, and also, according to his near-contemporary biographer Passeri, to Cavalier d’Arpino (1568-1640).²  Mola’s style is chiefly defined by his ability to synthesize the two eloquent artistic traditions of Venice and Bologna, something that is readily apparent in the present pastel study.  Mola seems to have travelled from Rome to Northern Italy on at least two occasions, the first in 1634-1637, when he is known to have worked in Venice, and subsequently between 1638 and 1647.  For part of this second absence from Rome, around 1638-40, he worked in Bologna with Francesco Albani (1578-1660), and Albani’s influence, together with elements of the Carraccesque tradition leading up to Guercino, can be strongly felt in Mola’s works, both drawn and painted.   

The pictorial use of black chalk and pastels in combination with blue paper is highly reminiscent of drawings by certain Venetian masters, especially Jacopo Bassano and his workshop.  Mola has worked here with very robust and assured strokes in black chalk, incorporating masterful touches of pastel to create contrasting and softer areas of ochre and red.  The head is slightly bigger than life size, and may have been executed in preparation for a painted work.  Catherine Loisel noted that although the Adrien drawing does not seem to be related to any known work by the artist, there is a close resemblance with the head of a man in Renaissance clothing, wearing a hat, in one of the frescoed lunettes in the Galleria of the Palazzo Pamphili at Nettuno, near Anzio, a fresco that was largely destroyed during the Second World War (fig. 1).  There is indeed a striking similarity of facial type between the frescoed figure and the present sheet.  The fresco was painted by Mola when he was employed by Principe Camillo Pamphilj, around 1651-1652, to decorate a number of rooms in the prince’s newly acquired palace at Nettuno.  

Although somehow more academic in the execution than the present sheet, which is characterized by a vigorous and free use of the media, another pastel by Mola, a Head of Bacchus now in Weimar,³ does still share many stylistic qualities.  The Weimar pastel was, though, executed somewhat earlier, circa 1647-48, in preparation for a fresco of Bacchus and Ariadne, painted in the Roman palace of Giovanni Battista Costaguti.  Loisel also mentioned in her catalogue entry other studies executed in the same media, including the very handsome and finished Self-portrait, now in the Uffizi

We are grateful to Professor Richard Cocke for confirming, from an image, the attribution to Mola.
For another drawing by Mola in the Adrien collection, datable to the same period, see lot XXXX

1. Although the drawing was catalogued in the Rennes exhibition as attributed to Mola, Catherine Loisel has confirmed that this was an editorial error, and she always believed the attribution to Mola

2. G.B. Passeri, Vite de' Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti dall'anno 1641 sino all'anno 1673,ed. J. Hess, Leipzig/Vienna 1934, p. 36

3. Weimar, Graphische Sammlung, inv. no. KK 9778. See F. Petrucci, Pier Francesco Mola (1612-1666). Materia e colore nella pittura del ‘600, Rome 2012, p. 429, reproduced D6.4

4. Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe; , reproduced p. 3