Lot 2: Girolamo Sellari, called Girolamo da Carpi (Ferrara circa 1501-1556)

Priests leading a bull, a ram and a boar to an altar, after the Antique inscribed 'TFP PEV' and with inscriptions on the mount 'No-244', 'b', '10 franco' and 'Bo+' (twice) black chalk, pen and brown ink on light brown paper 7 7/8 x 131/2 in. (199 x 342 mm.) PROVENANCE Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon (L. 779); Paris, 1-19 May 1826, probably lot 280 (as Franco, 31.5 frs. to Remoisenet). Pierre Defer, by descent to Henri Dumesnil (L. 739). A. Normand (L. 153c). LITERATURE A. Duval, Monuments des Arts du Dessin..., Paris, 1829, II, pl. 103 (as Polidoro da Caravaggio). P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture, London, 1986, p. 223, under no. 190. EXHIBITION Paris, Galerie Aubry, Dessins du XVIe et XVIIe dans les collections priv‚es fran‡aises, 1971, no. 26. Paris, Mus‚e du Louvre, Dominique-Vivant Denon, l'oeil de Napol‚on, 1999, no. 548. NOTES Philip Pouncey attributed this drawing to Girolamo da Carpi and compared it to drawings by Carpi and his pupils in an album in the British Museum, J. Gere and P. Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Artists working in Rome, London, 1983, pp. 96-7. The drawing is probably copied from a Julio-Claudian relief panel, now in the Louvre, which was in the Grimani Collection in Venice at the end of the 16th Century. The scene depicted is the sacrifice of the suovetaurilia, performed in front of the Palace of Augustus. The relief was confiscated by the French under Denon in 1797, and was transferred to the Louvre. In 1815 Denon suceeded in substituting a relief from the Borghese collection for the Grimani panel, which under the terms of the Peace he was required to return to the Biblioteca San Marco in Venice. Denon considered the relief to be one of the best in the Louvre, an opinion which probably explains his purchase of the present drawing.