JEAN-ROBERT ANGO | Margaret of Cortona finding the body of her lover, after Marco Benefial

Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1774), Paris, (L. 2097), son montage avec l'inscription à la plume et encre noire : Turbata aspectu amasii turpiter trucidati, ad bonam frugem se recipit B. Margarita Corton. In aede cui nomen Ara-Cœli, et dans le cartouche : PINXIT ROMAE / MARC. BENEFIALE / DELINEABAT / J. ROBERT. ANGOT. ;
Sa vente, Paris 15 novembre 1775 - 30 janvier 1776, vraisemblablement partie du n°188 (adjugé pour 22 livres à Du Vivier) ; 
Collection Du Vivier; 
Portefeuille acquis de la collection Du Vivier par l'intervention de M. Allongé, par Charles Philippe de Chennevières-Pointel (1820-1899) Paris, (L. 2073) ;
Sa vente, Paris, 4-7 avril 1900, partie du n°8 (sous le nom de Robert Ango), (adjugé 30 francs à Grosjean) ;
Acquis à Bruxelles, commerce d'art, 1971.

Rennes, 2012, n°67 (notice par Sarah Boyer) ;
Sceaux 2013 (sans catalogue)

P. de Chennevières, "Une collection de dessins d'artistes français, chapitre XVII", L'Artiste, décembre 1896, chap. XIX, p. 178 ;
Toronto-Ottawa-San Francisco-New York, French master drawings of 17th and 18th centuries of North American collections, Londres, 1972, p.151, cité sous n°2 ; 
A. Leclair, Louis-Jacques Durameau (1733-1796), Paris, 2001, p.208 sous D 14, repr. p.209 ; 
S. Boyer, Jean-Robert Ango (?-après le 16 janvier 1773), mémoire de maîtrise, 2005, vol. I, p.20 note 22, p.28 note 62, vol. II, p.28 fig.22 ; 
S. Boyer, Catalogue de l'oeuvre de Jean-Robert Ango dans les collections publiques françaises, mémoire de master 2, 2007, vol.I, p.24 note 38, vol.II, p.264 note 623 ; 
L.-A. Prat et L. Lhinares, Le Collection Chennevières. Quatre siècles de dessin français, Paris, 2007, p.182, p.492, n°1060f, repr. ; 
S. Boyer, "Quelques propositions autour de Jean-Robert Ango", Les Cahiers d'histoire de l'art, 2008, p.100 note 58 ; 
P. Rosenberg et L. Barthélemy-Labeeuw, Les Dessins de la Collection Mariette : école française, Milan, 2011, p.10, F13, repr. coul., pp. 564-565, 574

Laid down on the Mariette mount. The media strong and in good condition. Two small grey spot on the right towards the top of the right margin. A very tiny brown stain lower right. The Mariette mount is overall well preserved, a pin point hole in the upper center and some light stains especially to the right upper section and lower right. Sold framed.
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This handsome drawing, robustly executed in red chalk, is after a painting by Marco Benefial (1684-1764), one of two canvases executed for the Cardinal Pietro Marcello Corradini, for the Boccapaduli Chapel dedicated to St. Margaret of Cortona (1729-1732), in the Basilica of Santa Maria dell’ Aracoeli, Rome.   As Pierre Rosenberg noted in the first volume of his catalogue of the French drawings formerly in the collection of the great connoisseur and collector, Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1775), this drawing can probably be associated with a commission that Mariette gave to the painter Durameau, during the latter’s sojourn in Rome as a ‘pensionnaire à l’Académie de France’ between May 1761 and October 1764.  The commission was to copy some twenty paintings from Roman churches in order to ‘lui en rappeler la mèmoire’ – i.e. to remind Mariette of the paintings he had admired many years earlier, during his trip to the Eternal City, in 1717-18.  It is not clear why Ango executed this drawing, rather than Durameau, but we are in any case aware, thanks to surviving correspondence between Mariette and the historian and theorist of art, Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1689-1775), of the interest Mariette had in the work of Benefial, by whom he owned at least three drawings (see Provenance, sale, Paris, 1775-76, lot 187).¹ In a letter sent by Mariette to Bottari, dated 28 April 1764, the collector expresses his desire to have some drawings by Marco Benefial.  On 5 January 1765, Bottari informs Mariette that he has drawings after the two famous paintings by the artist in St. Maria dell’Aracoeli, St. Margaret of Cortona discovering the body of her lover (fig. 1) and The Death of St. Margaret of Cortona, but does not specify by whom these drawings were made,² providing a terminus ante quem of 1765 for the execution of the present sheet.  As Rosenberg pointed out (see Literature), not only did Durameau leave Rome in 1764, but also stylistically the present drawing is clearly the work of Ango.  Highly finished and beautifully executed, the drawing conveys the strength and the drama of Benfial’s painting, one of the most striking images of the period.

It is interesting to note that the section at the bottom of the Mariette mount, which includes the cartouche, the attribution to Jean Robert Ango and the long inscription, has been cut and made up, presumably to substitute or correct a previous inscription.

For a drawing by Louis Durameau after Mattia Preti, related to the same project, see lot 30. 
A further drawing representing The Death of St. Margaret of Cortona, attributed to Louis Durameau and after the abovementioned painting by Benefial, is in a private collection.<sup>3

1.</sup> The present sheet must certainly be the one listed under Benefial in the lot 188, where the first item is a drawing of a Flagellation, in red chalk by Durameau after Benefial, and the others are descried as: Deux autres Sujets idem, La Conversion & la Mort de la bienheureuse Marguerite de Cortone.

^2. Rosenberg and Barthélemy-Labeeuw, loc. cit.

^3. Ibid., p. 574, reproduced p. 575