Lot 21: JACOPO CONFORTINI

STUDY OF A SEATED BEGGAR AND OF A STANDING FIGURE HOLDING A PURSE, WITH ANOTHER VERY SMALL STUDY OF THE BEGGAR IN THE LOWER LEFT

8 7/8 by 12 1/8 in; 226 by 307 mm

Red chalk, made up at the upper left corner

James Byam Shaw, Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, Oxford 1976, vol.1, p.101, under no. 292, and fig. 26;
Christel and Gunther Thiem, 'Der Zeichner Jacopo Confortini. II', in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1980, p. 92, fig. 18;
Andrea Czére, L'eredità Esterházy: Disegni italiani del Seicento dal Museo di Belle Arti di Budapest, exhib. cat., Rome, Palazzo di Fontana di Trevi, 2002, p. 170, under no. 73, reproduced;
Andrea Czére, 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts: A Complete Catalogue, Budapest 2004, p. 130, under no. 120, fig. 120a

Hugh and April Squire;
with Alister Mathews, Bournemouth, in 1973;
Timothy Clifford, by 1976;
with P. & D. Colnaghi, London,1987

These figure studies can be related to a black chalk composition drawing by Confortini of A Saint Distributing Alms, now in Budapest. (1 )No painted version of the subject by Confortini is known, but it has been suggested that he was inspired by Domenico Passignano's altarpiece of St. Lawrence Distributing the Riches of the Church, painted in 1620 for the Calderini Chapel in Sta Croce, Florence. (2 ) Three further studies for the beggar, in different positions, are known: one at Christ Church, Oxford, one in the British Museum and one in the Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence. (3) All the studies may be dated around 1631 as they are comparable to Confortini's drawings for the frescoes he painted in the refectory of the convent of Sta Trinità in that year.

Confortini was a pupil of Giovanni da San Giovanni and worked on the decoration of the Casino Mediceo at San Marco between 1621 and 1624. He was admitted to the Accademia del Disegno in 1628.

1. Czére, op. cit., 2004, p. 128, no. 120, reproduced
2. Christel Thiem, Florentiner Zeichner des Frühbarock, Munich 1977, pp. 362-3, fig. 287.
3. Byam Shaw, op. cit., cat. no. 292, reproduced pl. 179; and fig. 25 (as at Colnaghi's, but now British Museum); Thiem, op.cit. 1980, p. 93, fig. 19