Lot 50
Attributed to Michelangelo Cerquozzi, also Michelangelo delle Battaglie (Rome, 1602-1660). Study of a Battle Scene. Pencil, black chalk, and brown wash on laid paper, n.d. Inscribed "Mic.l Angelo delle Battaglia" at later date on verso. A dramatic drawing attributed to Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Cerquozzi, also known as Michelangelo delle Battaglie, depicting a battle scene with a helmeted soldier riding a rearing horse at center, his spear piercing the back of a waving Moore. Beside him, another knight wields a long sword at a group of Moors in turbans, a pair of them lie at the foreground. Multitudes of fighting men are shown in the midground, with a group in a row boat as heads of Moors bob around in the water. A castle rises on a hill in the background with several more ships approaching to the right. Size: 12.25" W x 18" H (31.1 cm x 45.7 cm)
Michelangelo Cerquozzi, known as Michelangelo delle Battaglie was an Italian Baroque painter known for his genre scenes, battle pictures, small religious and mythological works and still lifes. His genre scenes were influenced by the work of the Flemish and Dutch genre artists referred to as the Bamboccianti active in Rome who created small cabinet paintings and prints of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside. One of the leading battle painters active in Italy in the first half of the 17th century, Michelangelo Cerquozzi earned the nickname 'Michelangelo delle Battaglie' ('Michelangelo of the Battles').
About the artist: "Michelangelo Cerquozzi was much admired by his fellow artists. His two closest friends were painters - Domenico Viola and Giacinto Brandi - and he was on excellent terms with Pietro da Cortona. He was always generous with younger men, and he went out of his way to encourage his potential rival Giacomo Borgognone. We also know that some of his most important admirers and patrons came from the professional classes. There was, for instance, the distinguished lawyer Raffaelo Marchesi to whom he bequeathed some of his works, and the doctor Vincenzo Neri whom with a group of other friends he immortalized in one of his finest paintings. Cerquozzi was soon taken up by some of the leading aristocratic families, but of a kind rather different from those who circled around the Barberini court and helped to spread the fame of artists such as Romanelli, Poussin and Testa. His first great successes were apparently painted for an official at the Spanish embassy, and it is possible that he may have been employed there at the very time that Velasquez came to stay as a guest of the Ambassador Monterey in 1630. There is also some evidence to suggest that both Cerquozzi and Velasquez painted bambocciate for the most important of the Hispanophil clans in Rome, the Colonna... Certainly Cerquozzi's career was closely linked to Spain and her supporters in Rome. He himself used to wear Spanish dress and until his later years nearly all his more important patrons were within the Spanish sphere of influence... Whatever their political affiliation, most of these families showed a striking contrast in taste with the more cultivated Barberini circle. They tended to ignore the grander history painters and the noble balance between classicism and Venetian colour which these artists were fostering as well as the exuberance of the Baroque... And yet Cerquozzi's success with the aristocratic society of Rome is certainly reflected in his art. As far as dating can be established at all, it seems that the small pictures with scenes from popular life belong mostly to his early years when he was closely following Van Laer and largely working for dealers, but that later he turned more and more to much larger pictures, which were painted to commission, and that he then widened the range of his subject-matter. There is not much reason for believing that this change was the direct result of specific pressures from his patrons, for we know that the more authentically popular and coarse bambocciate continued to fetch very high prices. Rather it seems to have sprung naturally from his closer association with them and, consequently, from a gradual acceptance of their values - a process not unknown among artists of all kinds since Cerquozzi's day." (source: "Patrons and Painters: a Study of the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque" by Francis Haskell. Yale University Press, 1980)
Provenance: ex-Royal Athena Galleries, New York City, New York, USA; ex-Harold A.E. Day, Esq. collection, England (active 1974-1986)
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#188599
- Condition: In overall fair condition with clear imagery. Mounted to construction paper with loss to upper left and small tear to upper center. Harold Day collection stamps in upper right, lower right, and on verso. Verso is inscribed "Mic.l Angelo delle Battaglie / B 1600 / D 1660," "No9 / Harold Day / L1.1.0," and "089882 M. Angelo Battaglie." Old Royal Athena label in lower right of verso. Tear with loss to construction paper in upper right of verso.
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