Bartolomeo Cesi,

Italian 1556-1629-

St Peter Martyr writing on the ground;

red chalk heightened with white on blue paper, inscribed Bmeo Cesi in black chalk (lower left), 21.1 x 24.5 cm.

Provenance: Private collection, France.; with P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London.; Private Collection, UK, since 1996.; By descent.

Exhibited: London and New York, P. & D. Colnaghi, An Exhibition of Old Master and 19th Century Drawings, 5-15 December 1995 and 9 January-10 February 1996, no.10.

Literature: Stephen Ongpin, 'An Exhibition of Old Master and 19th Century Drawings', Colnaghi & Co., London, 1995, no.10 (illustrated).

Note: We are grateful to Marco Riccòmini for confirming the attribution of the present lot. According to the Bolognese art historian Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693), Cesi was a pupil of Nosadella (c.1549-1571), and early in his career worked in the church of San Pietro in Bologna alongside Prospero Fontana (1512-1597) and Camillo Procaccini (1551-1629). While his early work reflects the influence of the Bolognese mannerism of his elders, a presumed trip to Rome in 1591 exposed Cesi to a more restrained, Counter-Reformation style of painting that he adopted in his mature work. In 1594 Cesi completed several frescoes of the Life of the Virgin in the church of Santa Maria dei Bulgari in Bologna, and an Adoration of the Magi for San Domenico the following year. At the turn of the century he was employed on the fresco decoration of several rooms of the Palazzo Fava, through which he came into contact with the work of the Carracci, whose frescos for the palace were completed a few years earlier. This was, however, one of the few secular commissions he undertook. Cesis work is almost entirely religious in subject matter, and the artist remained closely associated with several frescos and paintings of Carthusian saints and subjects for the choir of the Certosa of Bologna, generally dated to between 1612 and 1616. The present sheet is a typical example of Cesis figure studies, which are often in red chalk on blue paper. Perhaps inspired by the Carracci, Cesis drawings were made from life, using models posed in his studio, and indeed, his drawings have often in the past been attributed to one or another of the Carracci. Like this drawing, many of Cesis surviving figure studies depict models dressed in monastic robes. The present sheet, however, remains unconnected to any surviving work by the artist (Stephen Ongpin, 'An Exhibition of Old Master and 19th Century Drawings', Colnaghi & Co., London, 1995). For comparable drawings by the artist in red chalk, see the example at Windsor, A Kneeling Monk [RCIN 903696], and the double sided drawing which sold at Christies, London, 5 July 2013, lot 279 (£6,000).