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Presented here is a selection of 17th century drawings in stock. Please click on a thumbnail to view further information on the work, as well as an enlarged image of the entire drawing. Six thumbnail images are shown per page; click on the red page number at the lower right to view another page. | |  Click to enlarge | | FRANCESCO ALLEGRINI Gubbio 1624-c.1680 Rome Six Drawings of Various Subjects Each drawing in pen and brown ink, and all laid down onto one mount. Five sheets numbered in pen and ink at the lower right. Various sizes. Overall mount size 314 x 229 mm. (12 3/8 x 9 in.) Thought to be a pupil and follower of Cavaliere d’Arpino, Francesco Allegrini was mostly active in Rome in the middle of the 17th century. He was a prolific draughtsman, although only rarely can his drawings be connected with known paintings or frescoes. Large groups of drawings by Allegrini, characterized by rapid, sketchy penwork and relatively small dimensions, are in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. These six small drawings are typical examples of the artist’s spirited draughtsmanship, and seem to have been mounted together at some point in the late 18th or early 19th century.
| |  Click to enlarge | | GERRIT BATTEM Rotterdam 1636?-1684 Rotterdam A Mountainous River Landscape with Boats Being Unloaded, with a Church and Village in the Distance Watercolour and gouache, with black ink and gold framing lines, on vellum. Signed Battem in gold at the lower left centre. 243 x 367 mm. (9 5/8 x 14 1/2 in.)
Although his birth does not appear to be documented, it is presumed that Gerrit Battem was born in Rotterdam in 1636. Nothing is known of his training, although he may have studied with a relative, the landscape painter Abraham Furnerius, while the influence of his uncle, Philips Koninck, is noticeable in his gouaches. Battem first appears in documents as a painter in Rotterdam in 1665. His oeuvre as a painter is very small, numbering around forty works, and he is best known for his landscape gouaches, of which around sixty examples survive, depicting winter landscapes, city views and imaginary mountain scenes, of which the present sheet is a fine and distinctive example. As a recent scholar has noted, ‘The outstanding painterly qualities of these highly colorful gouaches explicitly made for the art market must soon have attracted the interest of many a collector as, indeed, they still do today. Battem was one of only a few Dutch artists to produce detailed landscape gouaches in the second half of the seventeenth century.’ It is assumed that Battem created these works primarily in the 1660s and 1670s.
| |  Click to enlarge | | CLEMENTE BOCCIARDO, called IL CLEMENTONE
Genoa c.1600-1658 Pisa
A Male Nude Kneeling on a Rock, His Arms Raised
Black chalk, heightened with touches of white chalk, on light brown paper, laid down on a 17th or 18th century Italian mount.
Inscribed di Clemente Bocciardi do il Clementone in the lower margin of the mount.
400 x 276 mm. (15 3/4 x 10 7/8 in.)
Drawings by Clemente Bocciardo are extremely rare. The present sheet, which has the appearance of having been drawn from a posed model, may be related to Bocciardo’s establishment of a school of life drawing in his Genoese studio in the later 1630s. At the same time, however, the way in which the figure is drawn, with its strong echoes of contemporary Florentine draughtsmanship of the period, would argue in favour of a later date in the 1640s or 1650s, when the artist was working in Tuscany. The distinctive 17th or 18th century Florentine mount that surrounds the sheet, and its likely provenance from a Florentine collection, would further suggest that the drawing may date from Bocciardo’s later years.
| |  Click to enlarge | | BOLOGNESE SCHOOL 17th Century Studies of a Reclining Male Nude, Seen from Behind with One Arm Raised, and a Man Grimacing in Pain Red chalk, with stumping. 326 x 218 mm. (12 7/8 x 8 1/2 in.)
| |  Click to enlarge | |  Click to enlarge | | GIACOMO CAVEDONE
Sassuolo 1577-c.1660 Bologna
Recto: A Man Rowing
Verso: The Head of a Woman, Looking to the Left
Black chalk, heightened with touches of white chalk, on pale blue-grey paper.
340 x 262 mm. (13 3/8 x 10 3/8 in.)
This large and striking study of a male nude is a fine and typical example of Cavedone's bold draughtsmanship. Several of Cavedone's drawings are directly inspired by figures in his master Ludovico Carracci's paintings, and the recto of the present sheet is one such example. The drawing finds its source in the boatman in Carracci's painting of The Return From the Flight Into Egypt, generally dated to around 1598-1600 and today in a private collection in Bologna. The head on the verso of the sheet is a study for the woman holding a candle, with her face half in shadow, in Cavedone's painting of The Denial of Saint Peter in the Museo Davia Bargellini in Bologna.
| |  Click to enlarge | | JACOPO CONFORTINI
Florence 1602-1672 Florence
Studies of a Seated Beggar and a Standing Figure Holding a Purse
Red chalk.
226 x 307 mm. (8 7/8 x 12 1/8 in.)
This drawing contains studies for the beggar in the left foreground and the saint at the centre of a larger composition by Jacopo Confortini of A Saint Distributing Alms Among the Poor, recorded in a black chalk drawing in the Szépmüvészeti Muzeum in Budapest. No finished painting by Confortini of this subject survives, however. Three further studies by Confortini for the figure of the beggar are known, both in black chalk; a drawing at Christ Church in Oxford and another in the British Museum. The British Museum drawing shows the beggar with his right arm raised, while the Christ Church study, like the present sheet, depicts the figure with a raised left arm. A third, more sketchy study of the same figure, drawn in red chalk, is in the Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence. All of these drawings by Confortini may be dated to around 1631.
| |  Click to enlarge | | GIOVANNI FRANCESCO BARBIERI, called GUERCINO Cento 1591-1666 Bologna
Saint Christopher and the Christ Child
Red chalk, with framing lines in red chalk. 285 x 260 mm. (11 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.)
This splendid sheet, datable to the 1630s, is unconnected with any surviving painting by Guercino. The existence of such a highly finished drawing, however, would suggest that Guercino was thinking of a painted composition, even if none was commissioned or completed. Superbly drawn in red chalk, the drawing is notable for such charming details as the way in which the Christ Child sits on Saint Christopher's shoulder, resting his foot on the saint's index finger while at the same time grasping onto his hair for support.
Like a number of red chalk drawings by Guercino, a counterproof was made of this drawing, and is today in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. A large number of such counterproofs, or offsets, were in the possession of Guercino's heirs, the Gennari family of Bologna, and seem to have been made as a record of red chalk studies by the master before they were sold. The existence of the counterproof at Windsor would suggest that the original drawing—namely the present sheet—was among those at one time in the Casa Gennari in Bologna.
| |  Click to enlarge | | JAN FRANS VAN BLOEMEN, called L’ORRIZONTE Antwerp 1662-1749 Rome A View of the Walls of the Colosseum, Rome Brush and grey and brown wash, with framing lines in brown ink. Signed(?) Van Bloemen in brown ink at the lower left and inscribed Veduta del Coliseo at the lower centre of the sheet. 330 x 282 mm. (13 x 11 1/8 in.)
A pupil of his older brother, the landscape and animal painter Pieter van Bloemen, Jan Frans van Bloemen arrived in Rome in 1686, and was to remain in Italy until his death in 1749, earning the admiration of his contemporaries—some of whom are said to have regarded him as the equal of Claude—and gaining the nickname ‘L’Orrizonte’, apparently in honour of the seemingly limitless vistas in his landscape paintings. The artist’s biographer, Lione Pascoli, makes several references to van Bloemen having made many drawings of Rome and its surroundings. Nevertheless, by comparison with his paintings, relatively few drawings by Jan Frans van the artist in Rome before him, van Bloemen made drawings of buildings and ruins in and around the city, and his use of a combination of pen, brush and ink with gray or brown washes is akin to studies of the same sights produced by some of his predecessors in Rome, such as Cornelis van Poelenburch and Bartholomeus Breenbergh. The ruins of the Colosseum had long been a popular subject for Dutch and Flemish artists in Italy, and van Bloemen produced a number of paintings, drawings and an etching of the site.
| |  Click to enlarge | | BALDASSARE FRANCESCHINI, called IL VOLTERRANO Volterra 1611-1690 Florence Devils Dragging Damned Souls Into Hell Black chalk, with touches of red chalk. A horizontal dividing line and oval framing lines drawn in black chalk, and the sheet trimmed to an oval. The verso rubbed with red chalk. Inscribed Mano di Baldassar Franceschini / detto il Volterrano at the lower left. 256 x 370 mm. (10 1/8 x 14 1/2 in.) at greatest dimensions.
Text and images copyright © 2007-2008 by Stephen Ongpin Fine Art. No portion of this website may be transferred, copied, or reproduced in whole or in part in any manner or in any media without the prior written consent of Stephen Ongpin Fine Art.
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