Lot 289: GIACINTO GIMIGNANI

PISTOIA 1606 - 1681 ROME STUDY FOR AN ALTARPIECE WITH SAINT THOMAS OF VILLANOVA IN GLORY, THE NEEDY RECEIVING ALMS BELOW Pen and brown ink and grey and brown wash, over black chalk, heightened with white within brown ink framing lines 305 by 195 mm

Newcastle, 1982, no. 56, reproduced pl. XIII B

Pierre Jean Mariette (L.1852), his sale, Paris, F. Basan, Catalogue raisonné des différens objects de curiosités dans les sciences et arts, qui composoient le Cabinet de feu Mr Mariette..., Paris 1775, probably part of lot 193; Hans Fürstenberg (L.3615), his sale and others, London, Sotheby's, 9 July 1981, lot 115, reproduced p. 82, purchased by Ralph Holland

Ellis Waterhouse identified this, in a letter to Ralph Holland, as the preparatory study for Gimignani's painting of 1661 on the right-hand altar in S. Tommaso, Castel Gandolfo, a church commissioned by Pope Alexander VII, designed by Bernini and built between 1658-61. The high altarpiece is by Pietro da Cortona. We are indebted to Laure Barthélemy-Labeeuw for suggesting that the present sheet was probably part of lot 193 (Pietro da Cortona) in the Mariette sale: 'L' Enlévement au Ciel de St Ignacè & d'un autre Saint Evêque; un beau Groupe de plusieurs Anges entoure les figures principales de ces deux Sujets, qui sont exécutés au bistre, rehaussé de blanc.' Ursula Fisher Pace in her dissertation on Gimignani (1973) mentions Cochin's remarks on the altarpiece, which he saw on his trip to Italy with the Marquis de Marigny. Cochin writes: 'Dans la chapelle à droite, on voit un tableau qui a de la beauté. Il est correctement dessiné: mais il y a de la froideur & de la sécheresse, d'ailleurs peu de magie de clair-obscur.'1 St. Thomas of Villanova (1488-1555) was made Archbishop of Valencia by Charles V. He was outstanding in his humility and charity and did much to assist the poor and sick. He was canonised in 1658. 1. N. Cochin, Voyage d'Italie ou Recueil de Notes sur les Ouvrages de Peinture & de Sculpture, qu'on voit dans les principales villes D'Italie, Paris 1769, p. 118