PIETRO SORRI | The Virgin and Child with Saint Michael and Saint Catherine

Sarthe, collection particulière ; 
Acquis en 1999.

Toulouse, Musée des Augustins, Pas la couleur, rien que la nuance! Trompe-l'œil et grisailles de Rubens à Toulouse-Lautrec, 2008, n°6, pp.52-53
Rennes, 2012, n°10 (notice par Axel Hémery)

Laid down on a wooden panel. Some small new reteaches retouching around the edges. Older repairs on the top left margin in the area of clouds is and the top putto at the extreme right. Repair also on the other margin from the top running down the margin towards the figure of St. Michael. Some retouches on the crease approximately in the middle of the sheet, running from the St Michael to the knee of the Madonna. Overall in quite good condition. Sold framed
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The attribution of this striking monochrome oil study to the Sienese artist Pietro Sorri was first suggested by Catherine Monbeig Goguel.  As Axel Hémery observed in his Rennes exhibition catalogue entry, it is most probably a presentation sketch made for a patron, although it has not so far been possible to identify any related painting.  Scholars seem to agree that Sorri’s most interesting artistic contribution consists of his bozzetti and monochrome studies, of which the Adrien drawing is a rare and well preserved example.  We find in the present work many of the key characteristics of Sorri’s style, including debts to Passignano, especially in the composition, and to Palma il Giovane, in the overall painterly quality, characterized by a very fluid use of the brush.  These elements are combined with barroccesque qualities, mediated through Sienese contemporaries such as Francesco Vanni (1563-1610), which are especially apparent in the delicate grace of the figures of the Madonna and Saint Catherine.  Sorri’s style, which was very much formed by his travels to Venice, Genoa, Florence and Rome, played a vital role in the evolution of Sienese drawing during the late 16^th century.  The Adrien oil on paper embodies the best elements of these travel experiences, especially from the artist’s Venetian journey, and in contrast to his painted altarpieces, which are sometimes restricted by stiff compositional schemes, reaches considerable heights of originality in a free, painterly manner.  The luminous grey tonality that pervades this monochrome work is skilfully highlighted with white oil, while depth is achieved through strongly contrasted areas of black, liquidly applied, especially in the foreground and around the figure of St Michael to the left of the composition.  

As Marco Ciampolini has pointed out, in his own time Sorri enjoyed a considerable reputation, and he was responsible for numerous prestigious ecclesiastical commissions, especially in Tuscany.¹  Yet it is only relatively recently that Sorri’s drawn œuvre has been thoroughly studied, first by Laura Martini, who clarified, in the early 1980s, the range of Sorri’s graphic work.<sup>1 

1.</sup> M. Ciampolini, Drawing in Renaissance and Baroque Siena: 16th- and 17th-Century Drawings from Sienese Collections, exhib. cat., Athens, Georgia, Georgia Museum of Art, 2002, p. 97

^2. L. Martini, ‘Note su Pietro Sorri disegnatore’, Per A.E. Popham, Parma 1981, pp. 107-117