God the Father

Description

Initially unattributed, this drawing was owned by the renowned Italian drawings scholar Philip Pouncey, who found it was a study for the central fresco executed by Bernardino Campi in the dome of San Sigismondo in Cremona between 1567 and 1570. Born in Cremona and trained in Mantua and Milan, Campi must have recalled the ceiling frescoes of Michelangelo and Correggio in his powerful evocation of God the Father.

Provenance

Sold by Max de Beer, de Beer Fine Art, London, to Philip (died 1990) and Myril Pouncey, London, June 8, 1959; sold, Sotheby’s, New York, Jan. 21, 2003, lot 11, to Dorothy Braude Edinburg, Brookline, MA.; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.

God the Father

Bernardino Campi

1567/70

Accession Number

185829

Medium

Black chalk, heightened with white gouache, squared in black chalk, on gray-brown laid paper, laid down on cream laid paper

Dimensions

21.2 × 36.8 cm (8 3/8 × 14 1/2 in.)

Classification

prints and drawing

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection