Page 77 - Pierre Durand Collection Including Chinese Art and Porcelain Sothebys Jan 27 2022

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LUCA CAMBIASO (MONEGLIA 1527-1585 MADRID)
The Death of Cleopatra
pen and brown ink, brown wash This drawing is connected to a fresco executed by Cambiaso on the ceiling of
10 x 15æ in. (25.5 x 40 cm) the reception room on the second floor of the Palazzo Vincenzo Imperiale in
Genoa. The fresco was destroyed during World War II, but it is known from
$7,000-10,000
old photographs (Magnani, op. cit., p. 97, fig. 99). Cambiaso’s large modello
PROVENANCE: for the decoration survives at the Ackland Art Museum at Chapel Hill (inv.
Unidentified collector (his mark, ‘D. H. H. F.’ in a rectangle, not in Lugt). 79.66.1; see Gillham and Wood, op. cit., no. 3). Several drawn versions of the
with Durlacher Brothers, New York. composition are known. A sheet from the Lempereur collection was sold at
Tomàs Harris (1908-1964), London. Christie’s, London, 7 July 2010, lot 303, and another version is in the Scottish
National Gallery, Edinburgh (inv. D718; see K. Andrews, Catalogue of Italian
LITERATURE:
B. Suida Manning and W. Suida, Luca Cambiaso. La vita e le opere, Milan, 1958, Drawings, London, 1968, I, p. 25, fig. 195). A third drawing, representing only
p. 88, ill. one figure group of the scene, is at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (inv.
L. Magnani, Luca Cambiaso da Genova all’ Escorial, Genoa, 1995, p. 97, ill. NM 1588/1863; see P. Bjurström, Italian Drawings. Venice, Brescia, Parma,
C.C. Gillham and C. H. Wood, European Drawings from the Collection of the Milan, Genoa, Stockholm, 1979, no. 304, ill.). As argued by Jonathan Bober
Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, 2001, p. 24, under no. 3. (op. cit., p. 270, under no. 30), the present sheet is an earlier version of the
J. Bober in Luca Cambiaso 1527-1585, exhib. cat., Austin, Blanton Musum of final composition developed in the fresco. While the general organization
Art, Genoa, Palazzo Ducale, 2006-2007, p. 270, under no. 30.
of the scene and the main motifs are fully developed, the foreground is still
largely empty.

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