Giovanni BAGLIONE (Rome, 1566 – Rome, 1644) - Lot 479

Giovanni BAGLIONE (Rome, 1566 – Rome, 1644) Narcissus. Red chalk with white highlights on light unbleached paper. Height: 29.6 cm Length: 260 cm Provenance: - Double-numbered collector’s piece (Rome, 17th century), with his annotation in the lower right corner in pen and brown ink: “cinque”; - France, private collection. Notes: Baglione practiced drawing from life as a young man, but also after his appointment as Principe at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1606, the date to which this previously unpublished drawing must be attributed; it belongs to the small core of his red chalk studies. This sheet is similar to those in the British Museum and the Musée de Rennes. The mysterious 17th-century Roman collector—known as the “Double Numbering Collector”—annotated his series of drawings with a numeral in the upper left corner and a letter at the bottom; he remains anonymous to this day. This drawing, which appears to have been reduced at the top, has lost its Arabic numeral.