Lot 47: LORENZO DE' FERRARI

LORENZO DE' FERRARI GENOA 1680 - 1744 STUDY FOR A FIGURE OF ICARUS Black chalk heightened with white chalk, on buff paper, a slight study of the same figure in red and black chalk, verso ; bears black chalk inscription lower right: Ad 420 by 282 mm

Santo Varni, Genoa, his inscription and numbering in pen and brown ink: n137 Deferrari coll. Varni;
with Pandora Old Masters Inc., New York (An Exhibition of Old Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, 2000, no.17), from whom bought by the present owner

The exhibition of Genoese Baroque Drawings in America, held in 1972 and curated by Mary Newcome Schleier, introduced a wider audience to the fine quality of artists such as Lorenzo de' Ferrari, whose work had been studied by Ezia Gavazza since 1965. Lorenzo, the son of Gregorio de' Ferrari, was greatly influenced by his father's style, but blended Gregorio's eccentric manner and lightness with a more academic approach. Other studies of figures by Lorenzo de' Ferrari from the Genoese collector Santo Varni are known, including two in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa.υ1 At the time of the exhibition in 2000 (see Provenance) Ezia Gavazza confirmed the attribution to Lorenzo de' Ferrari and pointed out the similarities of the present study to those preparatory for the frescoes in two important Genoese palaces: Palazzo Grimaldi and Palazzo Carrega-Cataldi.υ2 The present sheet should therefore be dated to the years between 1734 and 1744.

1. Genovesi a Milano, disegni di Palazzo Rosso e dipinti di Brera, exhib. cat., Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, 2000, pp. 52-3, nos. 75-76
2. E. Gavazza, Lorenzo de' Ferrari 1680-1747, Milan 1965, p. 93, no. 7, figs. 36-47, and p. 104, no. 13, figs. 93-104