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Provenance: Professor J. Isaacs;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 1987, lot 51;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 1992, lot 36, where bought by the present owner

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Literature: J.M. Merz, Pietro da Cortona, Tübingen 1991, p. 252, fig. 391;
Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinó, Pietro da Cortona e il disegno, exhib. cat., Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, 1997-98, p. 114, no. 6.10;
J.M. Merz, Pietro da Cortona und sein Kreis, Die Zeichnungen in Düsseldorf, Munich/Berlin 2005, p. 84

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Notes: When it appeared on the market in 1987, Dr. Merz identified this beautiful drawing as Cortona's preliminary study for the head of Genius who leads the kneeling figure of Science in the central group on the right wall of the vault of the Salone in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome. In the fresco, the figure wears a laurel wreath and carries a shield, the top of which is just visible in the present drawing.

Cortona seems to have arrived in Rome by 1612, finding work where he could. After working for Asdrubale Mattei, he was taken on by the Sacchetti family and through them was introduced to the papal court of Urban VIII Barberini. He executed a variety of works for both families during the 1620s. In 1632, Urban's nephew, Francesco Barberini, commissioned him to paint the huge vault of the Gran Salone of the newly finished Palazzo Barberini. Cortona worked on the project, with some interruptions, for seven years. It is one of his masterpieces and as Dr. Merz writes '...Cortona's creation of an illusionistic architectural framework of feigned stucco, which divides the surface into five painted scenes yet connects and relates the scenes and figures, was absolutely new.'υ1

The subject of the decoration is an Allegory of Divine Providence, with emblems and scenes which reflect the virtues of the family and of Urban VIII. The iconographical program seems to have been devised by the poet Francesco Bracciolini, but its realization was Cortona's own.

Merz has published a number of drawings which relate to this important commission, including rapid pen and ink sketches as well as black and red chalk studies of groups and individual figures, and even two compositional sketches. Although the surviving drawings do not give a clear indication of the development of Cortona's plans for the ceiling, a drawing in Ottawa shows that he initially conceived of the figure of Genius in the guise of Minerva.υ2 The present drawing, which is totally characteristic of Cortona in its technique and in its figure type, can be compared with others for the ceiling such as the Figure Study in the British Museum or the Figure of Religion in the Metropolitan Museum.υ3 Giuliano Briganti published a painted study of the head of Genius which Merz considers a copy after the fresco.υ4

1. J.M. Merz in The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, vol. 7, p. 908
2. Merz, op. cit., 1991, fig. 383
3. V. Rodinó, op. cit., p. 120, no. 6.16 and p. 128, no. 6.25
4. Cortona, Accademia Etrusca; G. Briganti, Pietro da Cortona, Florence 1982, p. 205, no. 49, fig. 286/25