Lot 4. Pietro Buonaccorsi, called Perino del Vaga (Florence 1501-1547 Rome), Jupiter handing a newborn boy to Diana, pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with yellow, on four joined sheets of light-brown prepared paper, 14 ½ x 18 ¼ in. (36.8 x 46.2 cm).  Estimate USD 150,000 - USD 200,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018

Provenance: Everhard Jabach, Paris (1618-1859). 
Gerhard Michael Jabach; his sale, Amsterdam, 16 October 1753, lot 190 (to Oudaan).
Neyman; his sale, Paris, late June 1776, lot 640.
C. Ploos van Amstel (L. 3002 and 3004), with his inscriptions 'Peryn de Vago f. 1530/ gebooren Toscane 1500 gestorven Rome 1547 Discipel van Rafael en van [?] Mch [?] Angelo' and 'hoog 13 d/ br 17 d/ Peryn de Vago f/ 1500 Gebooren Toscane/ 1547 gestorven Rome/ Discipel van/ Rafael Urbino/ en [?] Mich. Angelo/ 500-16/ 5+7'; his sale, Amsterdam, 3 March 1800 and following days, album AA, lot 36 (40 guilders to Van der Schley).
John Streep.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 8 January 1991, lot 51 (as attributed to Domenico Rietti, called Lo Zaga).
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 14 January 1986, lot 99 (as attributed to Pellegrino Tibaldi).

Literature: J. Bean, Italian Drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton 1966, p. 20, under no. 8 (as workshop of Perino).
K. Andrews, National Gallery of Scotland. Catalogue of Italian Drawings, Cambridge 1968, I, p. 125, under no. RSA 169 (as workshop of Perino del Vaga).
R. Harprath, Italienische Zeichnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts aus eigenem Besitz, exhib. cat., Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, 1977, p. 155, under nos. 107-108 (as Perino del Vaga).
Th. Laurentius, J.W. Niemeijer, and G. Ploos van Amstel, Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, 1726-1798. Kunstverzamelaar en prentuitgever, Assen 1990, p. 376. 
R. Bacou, Autour de Raphaël. Dessins et peintures du Musée du Louvre, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, 1984, pp. 92-93, under no. 105 (as workshop of Perino del Vaga). 
F. M. Aliberti Gaudioso and E. Gaudioso, Gli affreschi di Paolo III a Castel Sant' Angelo, 1543-1548, exhib. cat., Rome, Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo, 1981-82, II, no. 144, ill. (as attributed to Domenico Rietti, called Lo Zaga). 
B. Py, Everhard Jabach collectionneur (1618-1695). Les dessins de l'inventaire de 1695, Paris 2001 (Notes et documents des musées de France, 36), no. 92, p. 292, no. 190 (as workshop of Perino del Vaga).
E. Parma, Perino del Vaga. Tra Raffaello e Michelangelo, exhib. cat., Mantua, Palazzo Te, 2001, p. 254, under nos. 130-132 (as Perino del Vaga).
D. Cordellier, ibid., p. 245, under no. 125 (as Perino del Vaga).

Note: Perhaps the most singular talent active in Raphael’s studio, Perino propelled his master’s classical manner into the exuberant and elegant style that became known as Mannerism. Even more than his painted œuvre, Perino’s drawings are as puzzling in their stylistic diversity as they are exciting for their virtuosic use of the pen and their inventiveness. The present sheet – bold in style, large in scale, unusual in technique – is an exceptional example of the artist’s originality. 

The drawing belongs to a group of eleven sheets, all executed with pen and brush on brown-tinted paper and heightened with yellow bodycolor. The result seems to have been meant to imitate bronze reliefs, not unlike the scenes Perino is known to have painted for Raphael in the Vatican Loggie. The drawing offered here is the only one remaining in private hands; the others belong to the Courtauld Gallery, London, inv. 4734, 4735 (two fragments of one composition); the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, inv. 1948-1791 (a second version of a figure in one of the Courtauld drawings), the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, inv. 2542, 2543; the Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 10369, 10413; the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, inv. RSA 169; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 1983.56 (formerly in the Schrafl collection, Zurich); and the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, inv. C 213 (all reproduced in Rome 1981-1982, nos. 134-144, as attributed to Domenico Rietti, called Lo Zaga; the entire group, with the exception of the drawing now at the Metropolitan, was first discussed in print in Andrews, op. cit., p. 125). Together with the present drawing, those in Paris, Dresden and Munich, as well as three more sheets that seem lost belonged to the celebrated collection of the seventeenth-century Cologne banker Everhard Jabach (Py, op. cit., nos. 89-94).  

The drawing’s exact subject is hard to identify; although it has been suggested it represents Diana giving the newborn Apollo to Jupiter (see Rome 1981-1982, op. cit., p. 188), this is hardly possible given that Diana and Apollo were twins. The project to which the extensive series of mythological compositions relate is also not entirely clear. While they may originally have been intended as a decorative (painted?) frieze on various mythological themes, , flanked by winged putti in color (as first suggested by Harprath, op. cit., p. 156; but see Cordellier and Parma, op. cit., pp. 245, 254), Bernice F. Davidson has shown in a brilliant article that at least some of the compositions found use in a tapestry series known as the Furti di Giove, a set of seven panels depicting Jupiter’s love affairs ('The Furti di Giove Tapestries Designed by Perino del Vaga for Andrea Doria', The Art Bulletin, LXX, no. 3 (September 1988), pp. 424-450). Commissioned by Prince Andrea Doria, they were woven in Flanders in the mid-1530s and once adorned his magnificent palace in Genoa, but are now sadly lost. Engraved eighteenth-century reproductions after the cartoons for the tapestries correspond to three of the smaller-scale drawings (those at the Courtauld and the Metropolitan; see Parma, op. cit., no. 126, ill.), and a finished modello depicting Jupiter and Juno on a bed surrounded by putti, recently acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2011.36; formerly Sotheby’s, New York, 26 Jan 2011, lot 510), must represent a stage between the group of drawings to which the present sheet belongs, and the life-size cartoons, executed in colorful gouache and traceable until the early nineteenth century. One has been located at the Louvre (inv. MI 1118; see D. Cordellier and H. Bartelloni in Parma, op. cit., no. 125, ill.).