May 21, 2020 - Sale 2537

Sale 2537 - Lot 28

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
VINCENZO CAMUCCINI
(Rome 1771-1844 Rome)
The Poet Virgil Reading his Works to a Group of Men and Women.

Pen and ink and wash with white gouache heightening and pencil on paper. 210x308 mm; 8 3/8x12 1/4 inches.

Sold Sotheby's, New York, January 29, 1997, sale number 6943, lot 191 (as Jean-François Pierre Peyron).

We would like to thank Henri Zerner for identifying this as the work of Camuccini. Zerner notes, "The composition was commissioned by the Duchess of Devonshire to be engraved for an edition of Virgil that appeared in 1819. It could not be by Peyron anyway because it shows the empress Livia, quite clearly based on Ingres' version of the subject of 1812 when Peyron was dead." Zerner cites another collector with an oil study of the subject also by Camuccini.