Francisco de Herrera the Elder

Saint John the Evangelist

VAT reduced rate

Lot Closed

July 8, 11:04 AM GMT

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Drawings from the Collection of Carlos Alberto Cruz

Francisco de Herrera the Elder

Seville circa 1590 - 1656 Madrid

Saint John the Evangelist

Point of the brush and several shades of grey wash

150 by 107 mm

Frank Hall Standish (1799-1840), London,
by inheritance, with his entire at collection, to Louis Phillippe of Orléans, King of France (1773-1850), Paris,
his posthumous sale, Paris, Defer,- C.P.: Bonnefons, 6 December 1852, in lot 583 (sixteen items);
Herbert List, Munich (without his dry stamp)

D. Angulo & A.E. Pérez Sánchez, A Corpus of Spanish Drawings. Seville 1600-1650, Oxford 1985, p. 21, no. 21, reproduced pl. VII, fig. 21

This is one of a well-known series of drawings of the Twelve Apostles or Saints. The majority of these are in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, while the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery of Canada have one each, and the rest are in private collections (see Literature, p. 19, nos. 9-23, all reproduced pls. IV-VII). They have been attributed to Herrera the Elder since 1842, and in the same year, after the death of the collector Frank Hall Standish (1799-1840), they were presented with his entire collection to King Louis Philippe of Orléans (1773-1850). These sheets appear to have been conceived as finished works of art in their own right, but may also have served as studies for devotional paintings.

Though the attribution has wavered between Herrera the Elder and his son Francisco de Herrera "El Mozo" (the Younger; 1627-1685), most scholars seem, like Angulo and Pérez Sánchez, to favour an attribution to the father,