Works on Paper 2019 - Jean Luc Baroni

Francesco Hayez
Venice 1791-1882 Milan
25
Portrait of Carolina Zucchi, circa 1822
Black and red chalk
290 x 218 mm (11 1 /2 x 8 1 /2 in.)
This beautiful, unpublished drawing is a work of
particular refinement and a notable addition to
the graphic corpus of Francesco Hayez, a major
figure of Italian Romanticism. It is a portrait of
Carolina Zucchi, who between 1822 and 1830
played the leading role in Hayez’s life and career.
Herself an artist, Carolina Zucchi had studied
draughtsmanship and lithography at the Academy
of Fine Arts in Brera before becoming Hayez’s pupil.
Coming from the family who received “il fiore della
gioventù artistica, tra cui Bellini, Donizzetti, Carlo
Cattaneo” 1 , Carolina was bound up with Hayez
in a passionate relationship and acted as his main
model.
“La Fornarina dell’Hayez”, as she became known,
appears in many of his most famous and masterful
works which transformed Italian painting making it
part of the European Romantic revolution. She may
be recognised in the Romeo’s last Kiss executed
in 1823 for Giambattista Sommariva (Tremezzo,
Villa Carlotta) and in the Marriage of Romeo and
Juliet, painted the same year for another exceptional
collector, Count Franz Erwein von Schoenborn-
Wiesentheid (Pommersfelden, Graf von Schoenborn
Kunstammlungen). She is depicted in the Angel of
the Annunciation (1824, in the Galleria d’Arte
Moderna, Turin), in the moving Penitent Mary
Magdalen (1825, in the collection of Franco
Maria Ricci), the fearless Mary Stuart walking to
her Execution (a monumental painting of 1827
executed for Baron Ludwig von Seufferheld and
now in the collection of the Banca Cesare Ponti),
and the Titianesque Magdalen kneeling at the foot
of the Crucifix commissioned by the Isimbardi
Casati family for the church of Muggio and now in
the Museo Diocesano, Milan. She appears again
in blazing nudity in the Bath of Bathseheba (1827)
purchased by the King of Wuettemberg to be placed
beside the Harem Slave by Giuseppe Molteni and
Ingres’s Grande Odalisique 2 .
Hayez also preserved the memory of their passionate
relationship in works of great intimacy, a series
of paintings and drawings, amongst which is an
extraordinary group of erotic studies drawn in the
setting of Hayez’s Milanese studio 3 .
The chronology of our drawing can be accurately
established due to its comparison with the most
famous portrait of Carolina, the oil on panel
known by the title of L’ammalata (Fig.1), now in the
collection of the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna di
Torino 4 . This panel can be dated thanks to a version,
signed and dated 1822, which recently reappeared 5 .
The slight inclination of the face and the expression
of attention and sweetness are very similar to the
present drawing.
Fig 1. Hayez, L’ammalata, 1825, oil on panel,
Turin, Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna.
The present drawing thus brings additional witness
to this relationship of rare intensity, both private and
professional. We are very grateful to Prof Fernando
Mazzocca for providing us with a detailed research
on this drawing which has been used for the creation
of the present entry 6 .
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