Lot 34: Lucio Massari (1568-1633)

The Flagellation of Christ black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash heightened with white on light brown paper, squared in black chalk 131/2 x 9 in. (345 x 229 mm.) PROVENANCE Sir Peter Lely (L. 2092). Possibly N. Lanier (L. 2908). N.F. Haym (L. 1972). P.-J. Mariette (L. 1852, twice); F. Basan, Paris, 15 November 1775, lot 324 (as 'Louis Carrache... N.S. attach‚ … la colonne, & flagell‚ par quatre bourreaux impitoyables, qui exercent leurs fureur sur son corps: ce sujet, en hauteur, est … la plume & au bistre & de la touche la plus savante'). LITERATURE C. von Prybram-Gladona, Unbekannte Zeichnungen alter Meister aus europ„ischem Privatbesitz, Munich, 1969, no. 57, illustrated. NOTES Although the present drawing was included in the Mariette sale of 1775 as Ludovico Carracci, it can be compared to another sheet of the same subject also in Mariette's sale and correctly attributed by him to Massari, C. Legrand, Le dessin … Bologne, La r‚forme des trois Carracci, exhib. cat. Paris, Mus‚e du Louvre, 1994, no. 75. Catherine Legrand and Babette Bohn reconstructed a small corpus of drawings around the Louvre drawing, whose attribution probably dates back to Crozat. The famous financier and collector had gathered a large group of drawings by the Carracci and their followers. To the Louvre drawing Catherine Legrand connected another Flagellation at Windsor Castle, C. Legrand, op. cit., p. 112. Both drawings are very close in handling to this sheet, though their compositions are quite different. Catherine Legrand dates the Louvre and Windsor drawings to before 1600 and probably after 1592-4, the dates of Ludovico's own version of the Flagellation now in the Pinacoteca in Bologna.