Baldassare Francheschini, called Volterrano

Anonymous sale, New York, Doyle, 21 October 1998, lot 10 (as School of Guido Reni);
There acquired. 

This touching depiction of a Sleeping Cupid has recently been confirmed as an autograph version of a popular composition by Baldassare Franceschini, also known as "Volterrano" after his hometown of Volterra.  Known more for his work in fresco than in oil, it is unsurprising that the prime version of this composition, now in the Pitti Palace, Florence, was a fresco painted on plaster spread onto a straw mat.¹  Indeed Volterrano painted a series of frescoes in the Pitti Palace in the 1650s for Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere; the series of chambers are known as the "Quartiere del Volterrano." Volterrano's masterpiece, completed within the same decade, is the series of frescoes he was commissioned to paint for the Niccolini chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. 

Volterrano's composition proved popular; a handful of versions in oil, both autograph and from his workshop, are known, including one in Burghley House, of similar size and format to the present painting,² and a more horizontal, oval-shaped canvas in the Musée Magnin, Dijon.³ The present example is particularly close to the fresco, and the quick, flickering brushwork is typical of the artist's style in the late 1640s and 1650s. 

We are grateful to Maria Cecilia Fabbri, Alessandro Grassi and Francesca Baldassari for each independently confirming the attribution of this painting based on digital photographs. 

1. Fabbri et al. 2013, cat. no. 33, pp. 158-9. 

2. Oil on canvas, 61 by 46 cm., inv. no. PIC038.  See https://collections.burghley.co.uk/collection/a-sleeping-cupid-by-baldassare-franceschini-1611-1690/ 

3. Oil on canvas in a painted oval, 53 by 66.5 cm, inv. no. 1938 390, Fabbri et al. 2013, cat. no. 53, reproduced p. 200.