Italian School

This is the title page from a portfolio of 384 drawings acquired by the Albertina from the J. C. Wawra Gallery in Vienna in 1908 but subsequently sold when they were declared the property of Archduke Friedrich of Hapsburg after World War I. The album had been dismembered at the Albertina, and it was not kept together when it was sold. Many drawings ended up in Berlin, and another group was sold to a Viennese collector and subsequently made its way to the United States. In the introduction to his 1976 exhibition catalogue, Scholz explains that the album “became available here in New York” about 1940. He acquired a large group of the drawings--among them a notable group of studies by Cavedone--as well as this title page, probably the work of a Bolognese dealer in the early eighteenth century. More than 40 sheets from the album came to the Morgan with Scholz's collection.