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Artist or Maker: Benvenuto Tisi, il Garofalo (Ferrara 1481-1559)

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Description: Four studies of Saint John the Baptist holding a lamb
pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, on light brown paper, upper left corner made up
5 1/2 x 8 3/8 in. (137 x 214 mm.)

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Provenance: Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 11 January 1989, lot 1 (as Circle of Biagio Pupini dalle Lame).

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Notes: ITALY

The third from the left of these four studies was used for the figure of the Baptist in Garofalo's altarpiece of The Madonna and Child enthroned, attended by musical angels and Saints John the Baptist, Contardo d'Este and Lucy, dated 1532, painted for the chapel of the Ducal Palace in Ferrara and now in the Galleria Estense, Modena (A.M. Fioravanti Baraldi, Benvenuti Tisi, il Garofalo, Rimini, 1993, no. 152). A study for the whole composition is in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (A.M. Fioravanti Baraldi, op. cit., no. D 9).
Garofalo's draughtsmanship is very little known compared with his large painted oeuvre. Many of his drawings have long been assigned to other artists such as Biagio Pupini, as in the case of the present drawing, or Girolamo da Carpi, as discussed by Phillip Pouncey in what was the first modern investigation into the subject (P. Pouncey, 'Drawings by Garofalo', The Burlington Magazine, XCVII (1995), pp. 196-202). As exemplified by the present work, Garofalo's drawings can be clearly distinguished from those of Pupini and da Carpi by the much more delicate handling of white heightening and the fine delineation of tapering limbs. Pouncey indentified a small group of drawings in the Louvre which are closely comparable to the present work and date from the same period (P. Pouncey, op. cit., figs. 10-12; inv. nos. 9071-73 ).
Galleria Estense, Modena

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