Giovanni BALDUCCI, known as Il COSCI (1560 - 1631), The Taking of the Habit of Saint Francis

The Taking of the Habit of Saint Francis
Giovanni BALDUCCI known as Il COSCI (Florence, 1560 - Naples, after 1631)

Pen and brown ink wash on blue paper
156 x 191 mm

Provenance :
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), London, (L. 2364)
Unidentified mark (probably L. 2591a)
Anonymous sale Christie's, London, July 6, 1977, lot 22

Comparative bibliography :
M.V. Fontana, Giovanni Balducci e il disegno. Novità per il periodo fiorentino e una nuova proposta per il Palazzo Reale a Napoli, in "Proporzioni", ns. 11-12, 2010 (2015) pp. 92-115; M.V. Fontana, Itinera tridentina. Giovanni Balducci, Alfonso Gesualdo e la riforma delle arti a Napoli, Roma 2019.


Trained in the shadow of one of the most renowned exponents of late Tuscan Mannerism - Giovanni Battista Naldini (1535-1591), whose first pupil he was before becoming his collaborator - in his native Florence, the painter won the preference of the highly influential Monsignor Alessandro de' Medici (1535 - 1605), and, in the years 1593 - 1595, after having carved out a respectable position for himself within the building sites undertaken in Rome under Clement VIII, finally made his way to Naples, where he quickly became the principal player in the policy of figurative renewal promoted by Cardinal Alfonso Gesualdo (1540 - 1603).

Marked by the graphic style most typical of Balducci's mature period and by his brushwork, which, particularly in the anatomical abbreviations and the mobility of the contour lines, still reveals some memories of his Naldinian apprenticeship, the sheet belongs to the last period of the artist's Florentine sojourn, and thus to the phase during which Giovanni sought to update his own formal baggage in dialogue with the protagonists of reformed painting in Florence, such as Bernardino Poccetti (1548-1612) and his elder Santi di Tito (1536-1603).

Comparing the drawing with Giovanni's entire pictorial output, however, there is no correspondence with any of the many paintings produced by the master throughout his career.
Balducci's rendering of figures, and in particular their abbreviated faces, is typical and can be seen, for example, in Christine de Lorraine prenant congé de Catherine de Médicis and L'entrée de Saint Antoine à Florence, both in the British Museum (inv. 1895,0915.572 and 1946,0713.244; see N. Turner, Florentine Drawings of the Sixteenth Century, London, 1986, nos. 180 and 181, ill.).

We would like to thank Mauro Vincenzo Fontana for confirming the authenticity of this work.