Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Camillo Procaccini
Bologna 1551 - 1629 Milan
26
A Study for St. Joseph
Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, on blue paper.
244 x 178 mm (9 5 /8 x 7 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, United Kingdom
Though born in Bologna, like his father Ercole
Procaccini, Camillo is known mainly for his work in
Milan. He trained in his father’s Bolognese workshop and
is mentioned in 1571 at the painter’s guild in Bologna
where his father was director. In 1580 he travelled
to Rome in the company of Conte Pirro Visconti, an
eminent Milanese patron who was later instrumental in
the family’s move to Milan. In 1582, Camillo was back
working in Bologna and his work shows the influence
of Taddeo Zuccaro in particular. By the late 1580s
Ercole Procaccini had set up the so-called Academy of
the Procaccini in Milan and Camillo had begun work
for Camillo Visconte Borromeo. Two years later he
received the important commission to contribute to the
decorations of the Milan Duomo. Some years after this
project, he returned to his Bolognese roots to work with
Ludovico Carracci on the frescoes of the nave of the
cathedral in Piacenza.
a sheet in the collection of the Ambrosiana, Milan (inv.
235), it is of squarer proportions to this present one, in
red chalk, and for an entire but differently conceived
Visitation scene 2 . This finely drawn and elegant study
of St. Joseph is therefore a rare and important record
of Camillo’s preparatory work for one of his most
significant commissions.
This smiling figure, with his elegant hands and tightly
belted coat is a newly recognized study for the Visitation
(fig.1), one of the two organ shutters Camillo painted in
1600-1602 for the Duomo, Milan, the other showing
the Annunciation. The confident vertical shading in the
coat, heightened with white chalk, is very characteristic
of his mature drawing style while the sympathetically
drawn head has a softness somewhat anticipating the
later style of his brother, Giulio Cesare Procaccini who
also worked in Milan at this time.
Catherine Monbeig Goguel has kindly pointed out a
group of four other drawings by Camillo Procaccini in
the Louvre, clearly studies for an Annunciation scene,
also in black chalk heightened with white on blue
paper. In her article identifying the drawings, the first
of which had earlier been attributed to Camillo by
Philip Pouncey, Catherine Goguel suggests that though
the Louvre figures do not appear in any of Procaccini’s
paintings, a connection may be made with the Visitation
and Annunciation organ shutters which are still in place
in the cathedral, painted during a period in which
Camillo enjoyed great success in Milan, the city where
he had become a citizen in 1594 1 . One other surviving
drawing by Camillo has been connected to the Visitation;
1. Camillo Procaccini, The Visitation, oil on panel, Milan, organ
shutter in the Duomo.
112