Gaetano Gandolfi

This attractive study of hands holding a small dish is typical of Gaetano's style.  The care with which the subject is studied would seem to indicate that it was preparatory for a painting, but unfortunately no such connection can be found.  The only slightly similar hand is that of a man offering water to the persecuted Christ in a painting attributed to Ubaldo.¹  A bozzetto of an Allegory of Baptism by Gaetano shows a woman holding a little dish in a related pose.²  In fact, sheets of studies like this are extremely rare in the surviving corpus of the drawings of the Gandolfi.

1. Gaetano e Ubaldo Gandolfi, Opere scelte, exhib. cat., Cento, Auditorium di San Lorenzo, 2002, p. 17, fig. 4

2. P. Bagni, I Gandolfi, Padua 1992, p. 367, no. 345