Oeuvres sur Papier - Works on Paper - Jean-Luc Baroni & Marty de Cambiaire - 2022

Gaetano Gandolfi
San Matteo della Decima, Bologne 1734 – Bologne 1802
22
L’Adieu
Plume et encre brune, lavis brun, aquarelle verte et rose, traits d’encadrement à la pierre noire.
299 x 206 mm (11 ¾ x 8 1 /8 in.)
Cette feuille magnifique est un ajout important au
catalogue des dessins de Gaetano Gandolfi, grand
artiste de l’école bolonaise, dont l’œuvre enrichi
au fil du temps par des ajouts comme celui-ci,
l’impose avec toujours plus de force parmi les artistes
européens les plus importants du milieu du
xviii e siècle. Cette feuille doit être mise en relation
avec une peinture de même sujet qui, à l’époque
de sa donation 1 aux collections de la Pinacothèque
nationale de Bologne en 1971, était intitulé L’Adieu
(Fig. 1). Elle était alors attribuée au fils aîné de Gaetano,
Mauro, peintre talentueux au tempérament
aventureux, parfois à la limite de la moralité 2 , une
attribution peut-être simplement due au parallèle
1. Gaetano Gandolfi, L’Adieu, Bologne, Pinacothèque
nationale.
This beautiful sheet is an important addition to
the graphic corpus of the eminent Bolognese artist
Gaetano Gandolfi, whose works, like this sheet,
established him to his rightful place alongside the
most outstanding European artists of the second half
of the sixteenth century. It is to be connected with
the picture of the same subject (Fig. 1) which was
donated to the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna
in 1971 1 and received the title Il Commiato (The
Farewell). At the time, it was attributed to Gaetano’s
eldest son Mauro, a talented painter of adventurous
spirit on the edge of morality 2 - this attribution
probably built by anecdotes of his tumultuous
youth such as his runaway from home when he was
sixteen because of an amorous deception.
The present drawing along with another sheet, which
appeared on the Bolognese art market in the early
1990s 3 , suggest a change of no small importance
in the attribution which until recently had seemed
solid. In 2011 Francesca Lui commenting on the
mentioned above picture gave the drawing from
the Bolognese market to Mauro. It shows that
she ignored not only the inscription “Gaetano
Gandolfi”, which she however cited in her entry 4 ,
but also what I had written in the monograph
dedicated to this great artist. In the monograph, I
affirmed that this drawing, which bears the reliable
inscription attributing it to Gaetano, is indeed by his
hand; it “meets the cultural standards in line with
studies of architecture” identified as belonging to
the great artist, such as, for example, Two Beggars
Near the Terribilia Well in Dusseldorf (Fig. 2) 5 , or
the sheet representing the façade of the church of
Santa Maria Maddalena in the Fogg Art Museum 6 .
The lovely sheet belonging to a private collection is
excellent in “rendering the details, such as the sort
of a shelf under the window sill, a board on which
are placed pots with plants, painted with green, red
and yellow watercolour; eroded coat of arms, and
the entire house” 7 .
The present drawing, highly reminiscent of the
above-mentioned sheet in its invention and details
of this unusual subject but rather different in the
study of light, shows the artist’s work in a new light
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