Echoes of the Past: Property from an Important Private Collection

Provenance:

Private Collection, France

Lot Essay:

Baldassare Franceschini, known as Volterrano, was a preeminent fresco painting in Florence in the latter half of the 17th century. His first significant independent commission came in 1636, when he was entrusted by Don Lorenzo de' Medici with the fresco decoration of the courtyard of the villa of La Petraia, near Florence. Volterrano also painted frescoes and altarpieces for numerous churches and palaces in Florence, Volterra, and Rome. His large-scale, crowded fresco compositions reflect an adaptation into a Florentine idiom of the Roman Baroque style, derived from Pietro da Cortona's frescoes in the Palazzo Pitti. His work culminated in the cupola fresco of The Coronation of the Virgin. Commissioned by the Grand Duke Cosimo III, the fresco was the artist's last major project, as he suffered a stroke shortly after its completion.

The present work is a preparatory drawing for one of the lunettes of the chapel dedicated to Saint Auxanus (San Ansano) in the Church of the Sanissima Annunziata in Florence. The chapel was decorated in 1643, on the commission of Giovanni Grassi, who was a well-known musician in his youth. It shows the present cello-playing angel seated at the center of the composition. Another preparatory study includes a brisk and energetic sketch for the whole lunette that shows this angel flanked by two others (Castello Sforzesco, Milan), as well as an impressive and finished modello for the lunette in the Musée Bonnat-Helleu at Bayonne.