Pietro da Cortona (Cortona 1596 - Rome 1669)
Waterfalls in a hilly landscape
Description:
point of brush and brown ink and wash over traces of black chalk
216 x 289 mm
Provenance:
Kunstveilingen Mak van Waay B.V., Amsterdam: 10 June 1975, cat. 246, Lot 67 (as attributed to Bartholomeus Breenbergh)
Sotheby’s, New York: 14 January 1992, Lot 18
with Baskett & Day Ltd, London
where acquired by the present owner in January 1992
Literature
J.M. Merz, ‘Landscape Drawings by Pietro da Cortona’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 2004, Vol. 39 (2004), pp. 139-140, fig. 16
Note:
Landscape drawings only account for a small but intriguing portion of Pietro da Cortona’s extensive graphic corpus and although he is better known for his innovations in the field of illusionistic fresco painting, a group of approximately 20 drawings attests to Cortona’s experimentations with the drawn landscape and the refinement of his technique over the course of a long career. The present drawing is a relatively late example, dated by Jörg Martin Merz to around 1650, and it demonstrates the virtuosity of Cortona’s later brush and wash drawings. The drawing depicts a mountainous landscape with a waterfall flanked by two hermitages. As first proposed by Merz, the drawing’s arched outline and the existence of comparable, lunette-shaped designs suggest that this is a preparatory study for the right half an unidentified fresco lunette.
SOLD