| Category | |
| Object type | |
| Materials and techniques | Red chalk heightened with white |
| Brief description | Vanni, Francesco; St. Francis receiving the infant Christ from the Virgin Mary, who is standing on a cloud. A monk is seated on rocks in the foreground asleep, with his beads and a skull in his hand; Red chalk heightened with white; Italian; 1580 - 1610. |
| Physical description | St. Francis receiving the infant Christ from the Virgin Mary, who is standing on a cloud; he kneels, and appears to be kissing the child's left hand. A monk is seated on rocks in the foreground asleep, with his beads and a skull in his hand; Red chalk heightened with white. |
| Dimensions | - Height: 10.4in
- Width: 8.4in
Original measurements converted from fractional inches into decimal inches (rounded to one decimal place).
Dimensions taken from: DYCE COLLECTION. A Catalogue of the Paintings, Miniatures, Drawings, Engravings, Rings and Miscellaneous Objects Bequeathed by The Reverend Alexander Dyce. London : South Kensington Museum, 1874. |
| Style | |
| Credit line | Bequeathed by Rev. Alexander Dyce |
| Object history | This was engraved by Francesco Salini. See the print DYCE.1516.
Collections - Lanone and St. Ive. |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Associated object | |
| Bibliographic references | - DYCE COLLECTION. A Catalogue of the Paintings, Miniatures, Drawings, Engravings, Rings and Miscellaneous Objects Bequeathed by The Reverend Alexander Dyce. London : South Kensington Museum, 1874.
- Ward-Jackson, Peter, Italian Drawings Volume I. 14th-16th century, London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1979, p. 183.
The text is as follows:
VANNI, FRANCESCO
(1563-1610)
402
St Francis of Assis receiving the Child from the Virgin Mary
Red chalk heightened with white on pale brown paper
10 3/8 x 8 3/8 (264 x 213) Dyce 182
PROVENANCE Pierre crozat (sale, Paris, 1741); ? Marquis de Calivière d’Avignon (sale, Paris, 1779); ? De Saint-Yves (sale, Paris, 1805); ? Rossi (sale, London, 1844); Dyce Bequest 1869; see the note below for a discussion of this provenance
LITERATURE Dyce Catalogue no 1 82 (as by Vanni); Bernice Davidson, ‘A painting and a drawing by Francesco Vanni’ in Bulletin of Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, Rhode Island), December 1958, p. 4 and p. 14, fig. 7
A large oil painting by Vnni and two engravings reproduce the same composition. The picture, dated 1599, was painted for the church of Nôtre-Dame-des-Anges, Lyon. It is now in the Art Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design (B. Davidson, loc. Cit. fig. 6). One of the two engravings is by Cornelis Galle the Elder (Le Blanc, 2, p. 262, no. 20). It is in the same direction as the drawing. The other, by an unknown engraver, was published by Francesco Salini and dedicated to Marchese Guido Pepoli. It is in the reversed direction; there is an impression in the Department (Dyce 1516).
Our drawing is probably the one described in P. J. Mariette’s catalogue of Crozat’s drawings (1741) as ‘le S. François don’t le tableau est a Lyon’ (lot 90). Mariette refers to Crozat’s drawing again in his Abecedario (Archives de l’art français) 6, 1859-60, p. 29, where he suggests that it was made by Vanni expressly to be engraved. ‘Vanni etait curieux de faire luy même des dessins très arêtes de ses tableaux qu’il faisait graver.’ Some of the outlines of our drawing have been incised with a stilus.
Mireur (Dictionnaire des Ventes d’Art, 7, 1912, pp. 277-78) quotes descriptions of the same drawing or of other similar drawings by Vanni in the three last sale catalogues listed here under ‘Provenance’. In the Saint-Yves catalogue the Saint is named as St François de Paule, obviously a mistake by the complier that does not prove that the drwawing was not the one now in our collection. The Dyce Catalogue states, without giving reasons, that our drawing was in the Lnaone and St Ive collections. Neither of these names occurs in F. Lugt, Repertoire des catalogues de vente publique, covering the period for 1600-1900. St Ive may be a corruption of Saint-Yves. Lanone may be a corruption of La Noue: but the well known collector Desneux de la Noue (see Lugt 661) died before 1657, and a provenance going so far back in time can hardly be accepted without more evidence than this.
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