drawing
- Museum number
- 1861,0810.41
- Description
-
Study of a monument for Pope Innocent XII; a seated woman with three putti supporting a portrait of him in a roundel, two putti with an armorial shield above
Black chalk, on two conjoined sheets
- Production date
- 1669-1714
- Dimensions
-
Height: 469 millimetres
-
Width: 239 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Lit.: N. Turner, 'Italian Drawings in the BM, Roman Baroque Drawings', London, 1999, I, no. 256
Turner 1999
The drawing was registered as by Maratti on entering the collection, but was transferred to the name of the sculptor Domenico Guidi (1625-1701) in April 1967, following Frederick den Broeder's suggestion that it was made by Guidi as a study for his monument to Pope Innocent XII Pignatelli (1691-1700) in the Duomo at Naples, commissioned in 1696 by Cardinal Cantelmi, Archbishop of Naples (Strazzullo, 1959, pp. 250-51; den Broeder, 1975, p. 112, fig.64). (Innocent XII's tomb, now destroyed, was later erected in St Peter's, Rome.) What is certainly the correct identification of the drawing, as a copy by Giuseppe Passeri after the monument, was made by Dr Jennifer Montagu and was confirmed by Graf. Not only is the style characteristic of Passeri, but it differs markedly from that of Guidi, as revealed in the two drawings that are certainly his among the Shaftesbury MSS in the Public Record Office, London (repr. Wittkower, 1938-9, opp. p. 186). The British Museum drawing closely follows the design of the sculpture, except in the position of the Pope's coat of arms, which are attached upright in the actual work but which seem to tilt slightly to the right in the drawing.
In 1690 Passeri made several drawn copies after celebrated paintings in Northern Italy, when he accompanied Padre Sebastiano Resta (1635-1714) on a trip through the region. The existence of several copies by Passeri of works of art in Naples, recently identified by Graf, prompted him to suggest that Passeri may also have accompanied or at least visited Resta during the latter's four-month long stay there in 1683 (Graf, 1996, pp. 536-7). 1861,0810.41 cannot, however, have been drawn before 1696, the year in which the sculpture was commissioned and completed.
Literature: den Broeder, 1975, pp. 110-11; Graf, 1996, pp. 536-7 and 546, n.48 and fig.8.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1861
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1861,0810.41
