Lot 282: DOMENICO FIASELLA

SARZANA 1589 - 1669 GENOA PARADISE Black and red chalk and pen and brown ink and grey wash; indistinctly inscribed in black ink, verso: Sa[rzan]a and bears numbering: 3. 344 by 225 mm

Newcastle, 1974, no. 54

M. Newcome Schleier, 'Drawings and Paintings by Domenico Fiasella,' Paragone, XLVI, May- July 1995, p. 45, reproduced pl. 44

F.A. Driver, by whom sold, London, Sotheby's, 27 May 1965, lot 188 (as G. Seghers), purchased by Joan Buzas (later Mrs. Holland) as a gift for Ralph Holland

Only a small number of drawings have been given to Fiasella, but this sheet previously attributed to Seghers is typical of his style and compares well to a drawing in red chalk and grey and red wash in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, representing the Education of the Virgin.1 The composition may represent Paradise and shows the Trinity enthroned with the Virgin, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, St. Lawrence, St. Paul and others. Fiasella has surrounded the figure of Christ with emblems of the four Evangelists. Mary Newcome Schleier suggested this drawing should be dated stylistically to the 1620s. She also noted that its composition and subject resemble Bernardo Strozzi's Paradise, frescoed for the Doria in 1620-23, on the choir vault in the Genoese church of San Domenico, now destroyed.2 1. See R. Bacou, 'Dessins du Musée de Darmstadt,' Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, no. 1, 1971, p. 304, reproduced 2 . See the bozzetto in the Museo dell'Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa; C. Manzitti, Bernardo Strozzi, Turin 2013, p. 120, no. 102, reproduced