Lot 26: JACOPO LIGOZZI

THE MEETING OF SS. FRANCIS AND DOMINIC, AT SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERANO

27 1/2 by 20 3/4 in; 698 by 527 mm

Pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with gold; on two sheets of paper laid down on canvas and varnished

Sale, New York, Sotheby's, 26 January 2000, lot 48

This unpublished drawings is a modello for Ligozzi's fresco in the north-east corner of the cloister of the Ognissanti, Florence. (1) The painting is the largest in the extensive cycle depicting scenes from the life of St. Francis, which was commissioned from Ligozzi by the Franciscan Order of Florence; the artist worked on this commission, the most important of his career, between 1600 and 1616.

Other studies for this fresco cycle, mostly in lunette form and smaller than the present work, but also executed as modelli heightened with gold, are in the Uffizi, the Berlin Print Room, Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford and the Louvre. (2) James Byam Shaw refers to the study in Berlin, for Innocent III granting the Franciscans the right to preach, as being, like the present work 'upright in shape'. (3)

1. See A. M. Amonaci et al, Il Chiostro di Ognissanti a Firenze..., Florence 1989, p. 78
2. See F. Viatte, Dessins toscans..., Paris 1988, pp. 141-2, cat. no. 247.
3. See Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, Oxford 1976, vol. I, p. 87