Red chalk, heightened with white, on green-blue paper
272 x 292 mm
PROVENANCE:
Christian Hammer, Stockholm (Lugt 1237)
Sale, Karl und Faber, Munich, 10 December 1970, lot 140 (as Florentine, second half 17th Century) Herbert List, Munich, his stamp (not in Lugt)
Ratjen Foundation, Vaduz
LITERATURE:
Jacob Bean, 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1979, p. 167, under no. 219.
EXHIBITIONS:
D. Graf in Stiftung Ratjen. Italienische Zeichnungen des 16.-18. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 1977, p. 192, no. 89, illus.
A drawing by Luigi Garzi of an almost identical composition is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York1. The New York drawing is in pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white and on blue paper faded to grey-green. It differs in a few minor details from the present sheet, in particular the allegorical figure of the Nile in the lower left corner, who rests on his left side, turning inwards to look at the group of women, rather than facing the spectator as in our example. Also the figures appearing among the bushes in the middle-ground – probably the sister and mother of Moses who are surreptitiously following his fate - are omitted in the New York drawing.
Luigi Garzi painted the subject of the Finding of Moses at least four times; upright canvases are recorded in the Galleria Nazionale (Palazzo Corsini), Rome, and formerly in the collection of Sestieri2, also in Rome. The versions in the Vergani Collection in Milan3 and in the Uffizi in Florence4 are of a horizontal format. The latter, painted in about the late 1670s5, is probably most similar to the present drawing – in particular the figures of the river-god, Pharaoh´s daughter and two of her handmaidens correspond almost exactly with the present drawing.
The British Museum, London, owns a number of stylistically comparable compositional studies, drawn in red or black and white chalks6. In all these drawings Garzi´s training under Andrea Sacchi in Rome, whose studio he entered at the age of fifteen, remains apparent.
1 Bean, 1979, p. 167, no. 219
2 Sestieri 1972, p. 105, fig. 17
3 Graf 1977, p. 192. This is possibly identical with a horizontal canvas belonging to the Ronald Cook Gallery, London, in 1992.
4 Sestieri 1972, p. 104-105, fig. 16. Sestieri (1972, p. 110, note 38 and no. 24) mentions further examples in the Santoro Collection, Potenza Picena (Macerata); the United States (according to Graf (1977, p.92) this probably identical with the a painting in Finch College, New York); and a workshop version sold at Christie´s, 9 June 1972, lot 101 (ill.).
5 Thus dated by Patrizia Cavazzini, Luigi Garzo in Palazzo Lancellotti-Torres in Piazza Navona, Rome, in: Apollo, CXLVI, no. 4276, September 1997, p. 46, fig. 9
6 Nicholas Turner with Rhoda Eitel-Porter, Roman Baroque Drawings c.1620 to c.1700. 2 vols, London 1999, nos. 104-106
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