Annibale Carracci

Everhard Jabach (1618-1695);
Possibly Pierre Crozat (1661-1740);
Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774) (L.1852, and his mount with the attribution Ann. Carracci), 
his sale, Paris, F. Basan, 15 November 1775, probably part of lot 310;
Comte Moriz von Fries (1777-1826) (L.2903);
purchased from Riche, May 1919 (£12)

London, Royal Academy, Seventeenth Century, 1938, no. 66;
London, Wildenstein Gallery, Artists in 17th Century Rome, 1955, no. 25;
Bologna, Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio, Mostra dei Carracci, 1956, no. 236, pl. 111;
London, Royal Academy, The Paul Oppé Collection, 1958, no. 373;
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, The Hatton Gallery, The Carracci, Drawings and Paintings, 1961, no. 94;
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Exhibition of Works from the Paul Oppé Collection, 1961, no. 113;
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Le Cabinet d'un grand Amateur, P. J. Mariette, 1967, no. 27

T. Borenius, 'Drawings and Engravings by the Carracci,' The Print Collector's Quarterly, XI, 1922, 9, p. 120, reproduced on p. 119;
D. Posner, Annibale Carracci, London, 1971, vol. I, p. 113, 172 (5), fig. 95;
S.M. Bailey, 'Carracci Landscape Studies: The drawings related to the 'Recueil de 283 Estampes de Jabach',' PhD Thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1993, pp. 506-507, reproduced fig. 149b;
The Katalan Collection of Italian Drawings, exhib. cat., Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College Art Gallery, et al., 1995-96, p. 82, under no. 34, note 4 (as Agostino);
B. Py, Everhard Jabach Collectioneur, Le Dessins de L'Inventaire de 1695, Paris 2001, pp. 77-78, no. 90, reproduced

Laid down on the Mariette mount. Overall condition are good. Light staining in the sky and in the upper part of the drawing. A defect on the paper below the figure leaning on the rock. Media strong. The Mariette mount in very good condition.
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ENGRAVED:
In reverse by Jean Pesne, for Recueil de 283 Estampes d'apres le Dessins des Grand Maitres que possedoit autrefois M. Jabach, et qui depuis ont passé au Cabinet du Roy, 1675, no. 33c

As Sir Denis Mahon noted at the time of the 1956 Bologna exhibition (the first to introduce the works of the Carracci to a wider audience), this drawing was engraved in reverse by Jean Pesne towards the end of the 17^th century, while in the celebrated collection of Everhard Jabach.  The engraving was published as part of a set of 283 prints that supposedly recorded drawings formerly in the Jabach collection that had passed to the French King, but a copy of the present sheet by Michel Corneille II, now in the Louvre,¹ reveals that Jabach actually kept the original in his own possession, and this sheet was most probably sold by his heirs after his death, to Pierre Crozat.² 

Mahon also identified a letter, dated 6 December 1663, in which Constantin Huygens the Younger encouraged his brother, then in Paris, to visit the famous Jabach collection, especially to see his group of about fifty landscapes in pen and ink by Annibale.   Huygens wrote: ‘Il a ce dit on entre autres choses environ une cinquantaine de paysages desseignés à la plume d’ Annibal Carracci et Uylenburg dit que parmy ceux la il y en a un ou il y a beaucoup d’eau et des petites figures de gens qui se baignent.  Je voudrrois que si vous voyez cela vous en fissiez vittement un petit brouillon n’importe quelque mauvais qu’il soit pourveu qu’on puisse aucunement discerner ou sont les figures et combien il y en a pour scavoir un peu au vray si celuy qu’a Rembrant à Amsterdam ou il y en a semblablement des gens qui nagent du mesme master n’est pas une copie, ce que je ne croy pour-tant pas pour l'hardiesse de la plume’ (‘...among others there are circa fifty landscape drawings executed in pen by Annibale Carracci and Uylenburg said that among them there is one with a lot of water and small figures of bathers.  I would like that if you see it you make a quick sketch, does not matter how accurate but only to give the possibility to see where the figures are and how many to be able to discern if the one in Rembrandt’s collection in Amsterdam is a copy, which I do not believe because of the strength of the penship.’)³  Mahon argued that there is a strong possibility that the drawing with bathers mentioned by Huygens in his letter was in fact the Oppé sheet, pointing out that only one other drawing of this subject by Annibale is known, a sheet now in the Louvre,⁴ which was, like this, both engraved as part of the Recueil of Jabach’s drawings, and also copied by Michel Corneille II in a drawing.⁵ This second composition, however, shows only three bathers, and the description given by Huygens, of a drawing with a lot of water and small figures of bathers, would seem to fit much better with the present composition. 

The Oppé drawing is strikingly vigorous in execution, and the artist may have used a reed pen in some of the broadest lines with which he has reinforced some of the figures and certain areas of shadow, especially in the group of figures to the extreme left of the composition.  Clearly, both Annibale and Agostino studied and admired Venetian landscapes and especially those of Titian, and Mahon remarked on this evident source of inspiration, when dating the present sheet to the second half of the 1580s.  An outstanding example of Annibale’s landscape style, it is understandable why this exceptional drawing, with its equally exceptional provenance, should have been widely appreciated, even in Holland. A further copy is in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem.⁶ 

^1. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. 7634; C. Loisel, Ludovico, Agostino, Annibale Carracci, Paris 2004, pp. 317-318, no. 802, reproduced p. 316, fig. 802

^2. In his introduction to the catalogue of the Crozat collection sale (Paris, 10 April 1741 and following days, p. VI), Pierre-Jean Mariette mentions Crozat's acquisition of the Jabach collection, and the fact that when he sold his first collection to the King, Jabach had kept some drawings for himself – according to Mariette 'not the worst'.

^3. H.E. van Van Gelder, ‘De Jonge Huygensen en Rembrandt, Oud Holland, 73, 1958, pp. 238ff.

^4. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. 7457; C. Loisel, op. cit., p. 296, no. 727, reproduced p. 297, fig. 727

^5. In this case the engraving was also made by Corneille, whose drawn copy is in the Louvre, inv. no. 25486; see ibid., p. 317, no. 798, reproduced p. 316, fig. 798

^6. Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. no. K VI 13