May 21, 2020 - Sale 2537

Sale 2537 - Lot 11

Price Realized: $ 2,080
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
ITALIAN SCHOOL, 17TH CENTURY
Collection of 15 drawings from the Cassiano dal Pozzo "Museo Cartaceo."

Pen and ink and wash, 14 (of 15) double-sided. Each approximately 190x125 mm; 7 1/2x5 inches.

Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) was an Italian scholar and patron of the arts. Raised in Florence, he moved to Rome in 1612 and became the secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, a great patron of the arts; both Pozzo and Barberini were also members of the Accademia dei Lincei, an important scientific society. Along with his younger brother Carlo Antonio (1606-1689), who joined Cassiano in Rome in the 1610s, Pozzo formed the collection known as the Museo Cartaceo (or "Paper Museum"). This significant collection included 15th and 16th century drawings as well as hundreds of drawings after the antique and examples of curiosities of every kind that Pozzo commissioned from various artists of his day.

Pozzo was friends with a number of ex-patriate artists in Rome and commissioned works from them, including Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Simon Vouet (1590-1649), while he also supported native Italian artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-circa 1656), Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) and Caravaggio (1571-1610).

Pazzo's heirs sold the Museo Cartaceo to the Albani Pope Clement XI, who resold it to his connoisseur nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani. In 1762 the majority of the collection was purchased for George III, a scientific amateur and collector himself, who kept the collection at Buckingham Palace, London, while the remainder of the collection, including the current sheets, was dispersed elsewhere.