Sebastiano Ricci
Watermark: none.
Study for the painting "St. Francis of Paola Resuscitating a Child", ca. 1734, in San Rocco, Venice.
These sketchily rendered figures of an angel are related to an altarpiece of 1734 depicting St. Francis of Paola resuscitating a dead child. The angel on the left, in particular, corresponds very closely to one in a related oil sketch that Ricci must have executed in anticipation of painting the altarpiece. The agitated handling of the pen may be compared with the nervous brushwork in the artist's paintings. Such rapidly drawn, improvisatory studies were a source of inspiration for later eighteenth-century Venetian draftsmen. --Exhibition Label, from "Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings"
Inscribed at upper right, in pen and brown ink, "215".
Habsburg, Frederick, 1856-1936, former owner.
Scholz, János, former owner.
Alfred Moir, ed. Drawings by Seventeenth Century Italian Masters from the Collection of Janos Scholz. Santa Barbara : Art Galleries, University of California, 1974, no. 96, repr.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Eighteenth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1975-1977. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1978, p. 287.