This small sketch is mounted with three other fragments, which all come from the same album. Two of these are by the same hand and of similar size and shape.1 The third is a slightly larger drawing by Parmigianino, which has been cut into an oval.2 It is assumed that the drawings are not original to the eighteenth-century album, which contains mostly French artists of that century. Felice Stampfle convincingly posited that the album most likely came with empty pages into the hands of a later collector, perhaps Hippolyte Destailleur, who used it to preserve a number of his smaller drawings, including these four sketches.3
Footnotes:
- Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. 2006.27:1-96, fol. 31(a), 31(b).
- Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. 2006.27:1-96, fol. 31(d).
- Stampfle, in Miner 1954, 209-15.
Watermark: none.
Recueil de Dessins folio 31(c).
One of ninety-six drawings that the French architect and collector Hippolyte Destailleur apparently pasted into an empty quarto album. See also Recueil de Dessins (2006.27:1-96).
Sophie, of France, Madame, daughter of Louis XV, 1734-1782, former owner.
Destailleur, Hippolyte Alexandre Gabriel Walter, 1822-1893, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Morgan, J. P. (John Pierpont), 1867-1943, former owner.