A large and significant drawing, done from life, this composite sheet, enriched by several studies of details that complete a balanced mise-en-page, was drawn at the height of Maratti's career. It is a rare for such a sheet to remain in private hands, as the artist’s drawings, which have survived in considerable numbers, were mostly kept in groups that have now generally passed into institutional collections.
The study is preparatory for the figure of the executioner in Maratti's altarpiece, The Martyrdom of St Blaise with St. Sebastian (fig. 1), commissioned for the Roman Church of San Carlo ai Catinari and completed shortly after 1680.1 The altarpiece was never installed in its intended location, and is now in the Basilica of Santa Maria dell'Assunta, Genoa.2 It was already recorded there in 1739, in a letter written by the French scholar Charles de Brosses (1709-1777), when he visited Genoa at the beginning of his sojourn in Italy.3
The figure pulling the rope has been slightly altered in its painted incarnation, where he leans back further in an effort to take the weight of the Saint, suspended on a rope by his arm. The present study seems to be followed by another, slightly smaller, for the same figure, drawn in the same media, at Windsor.4 The Windsor drawing is possibly the closest to the final figure, with a similar tilt of the body, though overall it appears less finished. Most probably, Maratti was rapidly rethinking the angle of the pose. A third drawing for the composition, a black chalk study for the figure of St. Sebastian, is also at Windsor.5 In addition, a number of studies in European museums can be related to the same project, starting with a preliminary idea for the whole composition, sketched solely in pen and ink, in the Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid.6
Further sheets of studies, including several in Düsseldorf and Berlin, testify to Maratti's meticulous method in preparing such an important work, which required innumerable drawings to define the pose of each figure and finalize every detail in the composition. These include A study for the head of the child sheltering behind his mother and A study for the upper body of St. Blaise, in the Düsseldorf print room, and A study for the Head of St. Blaise with the executioner on the left (recto and verso), in the Kupferstichkabinett, in Berlin.7
The commission specified that St. Blaise should be shown with his fellow martyr St. Sebastian, and the biographer Giovanni Bellori remarks upon Maratti’s ingenuity in using the upper part of the canvas to represent the latter saint in glory, elevated and brightly lit.8
We are grateful to Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, for sharing important research on the altarpiece and for informing us that the present drawing will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Carlo Maratti’s paintings and drawings.9
1. The church founded was by the Order of the Barnabites in honor of St. Carlo Borromeo
2. As recorded by Giovanni Bellori (1613-1696) the painting 'may have been never installed in Rome'. In fact the altarpiece in S. Carlo ai Catinari, The Martyrdom of St. Blaise,is by Giacinto Brandi (1621-1691), who was first given this commission with the obligation that is be completed in 1674. We are grateful to Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò for informing us that newly discovered documents have clarified the issue of this competitive commission between the two artists. When Brandi did not fulfil his commitment, Maratti was charged on 8 July 1676 to complete the painting for the following year. When Brandi became aware that Maratti was finishing the altarpiece, he took over the situation, and in February 1678 he resolved to put his painting, then completed, on the altar where it still remains (see, Loredana Lorizzo, 'Giacinto Brandi, Carlo Maratti, l'abate Absalone la pala con il Martirio di San Biagio per la chiesa di San Carlo ai Catinari di Roma', Kronos, 2009, pp. 23-26)
3. C. de Brosses, Lettres, Historiques et critique sur l'Italie, Paris 1799, vol. I, p. 80
4. Windsor, Royal Library, RCIN 904170; size (391 x 235mm); A. Blunt and H.L. Cooke, The Roman Drawings of the XVII and XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle,London 1960, p. 54, cat. 265, reproduced pl. 59
5. Windsor, Royal Library, RCIN 904126
6. Madrid, RABASF, inv. no. D-0535
7. Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum, respectively inv. nos. FP 10542 and FP 8261; see E. Schaar, Die Handzeichnungen von Andrea Sacchi und Carlo Maratta, Düsseldorf 1967, pp. 122-123, reproduced pls. 83-84; Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. KDZ 26008
8. Alice Sedgwick Wohl, Hellmut Wohl and Tomaso Montanari, Giovan Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects: A New Translation and Critical Edition, Cambridge 2005, pp. 414-5
9. Stella Rudolph and Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), tra la magnificenza del Barocco e il sogno dell’Arcadia. Dipinti e disegni, forthcoming