Lot 291: GIOVANNI BATTISTA FOGGINI

FLORENCE 1652 - 1725 RECTO: THREE STUDIES FOR TULLIA DRIVING HER CHARIOT OVER THE BODY OF HER FATHER SERVIUS TULLIUS; VERSO: ANOTHER STUDY FOR THE SAME COMPOSITION, AN ARCHITECTURAL STUDY, A PLAN AND STAIRCASE Pen and brown ink and grey wash over black chalk (recto and verso); bears numbering in brown ink, verso (partially obscured): 6.. 295 by 212 mm

Newcastle, 1964, no. 47 (as Giovanni Paolo Schor); Newcastle, 1974, no. 89, reproduced pl. XXX; London, 1975, no. 59; Newcastle, 1982, no. 72, reproduced pl. XVIII B

Vitzthum, 1965, p. 177, reproduced pl. 38a; Edinburgh, The Merchants' Hall, Italian 17th Century Drawings from British Private Collections, 1972, under no. 49; K. d'Alburquerque, 'The Partial Reconstruction of Two Sketchbooks by Giovanni Battista Foggini,' Master Drawings, XLIX, no. 1, 2011, p. 73 and p. 90, B19, reproduced fig. 59

Possibly Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751); with Alister Mathews, Bournemouth, from whom purchased, 1964 (as Giovanni Paolo Schor)

The attribution to Foggini was first made by Walter Vitzthum who also noted the connection with a fully developed composition of the same subject in the Uffizi.1 More recently Kira d'Alburquerque, in her informative article in Master Drawings, has explored and reconstructed two Foggini sketchbooks (A and B), containing a variety of studies from sculpture, to palace interiors, ephemeral decorations and more, which fully illustrate the quantity of projects he undertook in his capacity as sculptor and court architect of Cosimo III, Medici (1642-1723). D'Alburquerque includes the present sheet in sketchbook B, containing twenty sheets, which she suggests must have been dismembered at least by 1887 when the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired their two Foggini sheets. The information regarding the old provenance from Henry Bolingbroke (1678-1751), mentioned by Vitzthum (loc. cit.) must have come from Alister Mathews, who seems to have had more than one page from the same sketchbook. Kira d'Alburquerque says that this sketchbook was probably the last to be compiled by the artist when he was already in his seventies, and the one cited by the biographer Baldinucci.2 The only sketchbook by Foggini to have survived more or less intact is his so-called Giornale, now in the Uffizi, containing 148 drawings datable to 1713-1717, published by Lucia Monaci.3 1. Inv. no. 11773; W. Vitzthum, op. cit., pl. 40 2. For detailed information, see K. d'Alburquerque, op. cit. 3. L. Monaci, Disegni di Giovanni Battista Foggini, exhib. cat., Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 1977