drawing
- Museum number
- T,11.7
- Description
-
Aurora sprinkling rose petals, with putti
Pen and brown ink, with brown wash, heightened with white, over red chalk
- Production date
- 1661-1707
- Dimensions
-
Height: 246 millimetres
-
Width: 394 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- Lit.: N. Turner, 'Italian Drawings in the BM, Roman Baroque Drawings', London, 1999, I, no. 32
Turner 1999
This drawing, which is still laid down on its old (?)Gabburri/Fawkener mount, was formerly placed in the unmounted series under the name of Carlo Maratti.
In a pencil note on the mount dated May 1980, Dr Dieter Graf pointed out that the drawing is in fact by Maratti's close follower Giacinto Calandrucci. Graf later connected the drawing with a variant study in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. D 8) and with a group of drawings in the Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf (Graf, 1986, i, nos 601-8). Of the Düsseldorf group, one (Graf, no. 601), in addition to showing Aurora scattering flowers in the centre of the composition, includes Apollo riding in his chariot on the left and Night asleep with her children on the right. Another (Graf, no. 602) omits Apollo and shows Aurora on the left and Night asleep with her children on the right. The other Düsseldorf drawings are for individual figures in the composition.
The project for which the British Museum, Haarlem and Düsseldorf drawings were made has not been identified with certainty. In type and pose, the figure of Aurora resembles Calandrucci's 'Flora', painted about 1680-85 on the ceiling of the gallery of the Palazzo Muti-Papazzurri, Rome (Graf, 1986, 1, fig.A 17), and in a letter to the Department of Prints and Drawings dated 18 December 1980 Dr Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò suggested that the British Museum drawing might be an alternative study for this decoration.
A drawing in pen and brown wash over black chalk of Apollo in his chariot surrounded by nymphs and putti, sold at Sotheby's, London (18 February 1991, lot 228, as seventeenth-century Roman School), may be by Calandrucci and should be compared in style with the British Museum drawing.
Literature: Graf, 1986, I, p. 139; II, fig.A 105.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1769
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- T,11.7
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: FAWK,5210.7
