Cesare da Sesto

Download image: 
Cesare da Sesto
1477-1523
Studies for Grotesques. Verso: Studies for a Baptism of Christ and a Lightly Drawn Landscape
ca. 1508-1512
Pen and brown ink; verso: pen and brown ink (figures), red chalk (landscapes).
7 1/4 x 5 5/16 inches (184 x 135 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.
II, 51 (recto) - II, 52 (verso

Download verso image: 
Notes: 

One of thirty four sixteenth-century Italian drawings formerly mounted in a nineteenth-century album, the Cesare da Sesto Album.

Inscription: 

Inscribed at upper right in pen and brown ink, 5 or 25 (illegible); inscription on fountain at lower center in pen and brown ink, VIRTVS. Verso: Inscribed at upper right in pen and brown ink, 26.

Provenance: 
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London and Florence; from whom purchased through Galerie Alexandre Imbert, Rome, in 1909 by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York (no mark; see Lugt 1509); his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943), New York.
Associated names: 

Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Rhoda Eitel-Porter and and John Marciari, Italian Renaissance Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2019, no. 36.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan: Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London: Privately Printed, 1905-1912, II, 51-52.
Carminati, Marco. Cesare da Sesto, 1477-1523. Milan : Jandi Sapi, 1994, 268-269, D44-45, repr.

Artist page: 
School: 
Century: 
Classification: 
Department: