Lot 23: Girolamo Troppa , Rocchette, Sabina 1630 - after 1710 Rome (?) mercury and argos Pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk, within brown framing lines; bears old attribution in pen and ink, verso : Orig di Carlo Marati n 353. , and numbering: R.

Pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk, within brown framing lines; bears old attribution in pen and ink, verso : Orig di Carlo Marati n 353. , and numbering: R. 33-2 d

measurements note 210 by 259 mm

Richard Cocke, 'The Drawings of Michele and Giovanni Battista Pace', in Master Drawings, vol. XXIX, no. 4, 1991, p. 381, no. 23, fig. 22

Bears the mark formerly associated with Pierre Crozat (L.474);
sale, London, Christie's, 4 July 1972, lot 68 (as Giovanni Battista Pace);
Herbert List (his dry stamp lower right);
Wolfgang Ratjen, Vaduz (inv. no. 662)

In 1991 Richard Cocke attributed this very handsome sheet to the close follower of Pier Francesco Mola, Giovanni Battista Pace. This attribution has, however, since been discarded in favour of one to the Roman artist Girolamo Troppa, who was also influenced by Mola. Troppa was in Rome in 1656, and he can be linked stylistically not only with Mola but also with Giacinto Brandi and Giovanni Battista Gaulli. In around 1670 he worked with the latter on the decoration of the church of Santa Marta in Rome. The use of wash in the present drawing is reminiscent of both Mola and Gaulli. The activity of Troppa as a draughtsman has only recently received any detailed attention. Erich Schleier has devoted two articles to the subject, identifying several compositional drawings.υ1 A sheet in Berlin from the Pacetti collection has four studies on the recto, two of which, on the right-hand side, represent Apollo and Marsyas and Mercury and Argos.υ2 Those sketches are studies for two paintings by Troppa now in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.υ3 The present sheet with its several variants could be an alternative idea for the Copenhagen painting of Mercury and Argos. The attribution to Troppa was first proposed by Ursula Fisher Pace and has since been endorsed by many other scholars, among them Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, Erich Schleier and Dieter Graf. 1. See E. Schleier, 'Disegni di Girolamo Troppa nelle collezioni tedesche e altrove', Antichità Viva, 6, 1990 and idem, 'Aggiunte a Girolamo Troppa pittore e disegnatore', Antichità Viva, 9,1993
2. Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. KdZ 16124; see Schleier, op. cit., 1990, p. 24, fig. 3
3. See Schleier, op. cit., 1990, p. 24, fig. 2