Provenance:

With Zeitlin & Verbrugge, Booksellers, Los Angeles, 1966; where acquired by:

Esther S. and Malcolm W. Bick, Northampton, Massachusetts, and Nokomis, Florida; by whom consigned to:

Sotheby’s, London, 2 July 1984, lot 59; where acquired by:

Duca Roberto Feretti Di Castelferretto, Montreal, Canada and Castelfidardo, Italy; his sale:

Christie’s, London, 2 July 1996, lot 42; where acquired by:

Private Collection, New York, until 2024.

Exhibited:

“The Bick Collection of Italian Religious Drawings,” John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, 1970, ex-catalogue (according to Sotheby’s 1984 catalogue).

Literature:

Old Master Drawings at Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, Booksellers, Los Angeles, 1966, cat. no. 30, as Guercino.

Famously described by Carlo Malvasia as “the glory of the female sex, the gem of Italy, the sun of Europe,” Elisabetta Sirani enjoyed great renown across Europe for her prolific talent and reputed beauty. Daughter of Giovanni Andrea Sirani (1610–1670), Guido Reni’s principal assistant, she had begun painting by the age of 17, most likely training under her father, since as a woman she would not have had access to an academy. Sirani worked principally for private aristocratic and ecclesiastic patrons, producing small-scale devotional works, larger religious and historical pictures, as well as altarpieces for major churches in and around her native city of Bologna. Upon her early death in 1665, aged just 27, she was immortalized in a series of poetic eulogies in which she was variously described as a “miracolo del Mondo” (“miracle of the world”), a female Apelles, even a Phoenix, the mythical bird who was continually reborn.[i]

As distinguished as Sirani was as a painter, she was equally celebrated as an engraver and a draughtswoman. Her graphic oeuvre is the largest of any female artist in early modern Italy, and her drawings are rendered with a highly individual style and technique. Sirani rapidly executed her drawings, which lends an especially painterly verve to her compositions.

The subject of the present drawing, a lady at her toilet with three attendants, does not correspond to any known painting recorded in Sirani’s list of her works, which was published by Malvasia. This suggests that the drawing might have been preparatory for a project never completed or simply drawn as a design unto itself. There are few genre-type drawings in Elisabetta’s oeuvre, which might suggest that she is here experimenting with a subject like Berenice—the mythological Egyptian queen who cut off a lock of her hair to ensure her husband’s safety in battle. While there is a clear focus on the figure’s hair here, she does not appear to be cutting it herself, as Berenice is typically depicted. Regardless, the drawing beautifully showcases not only Sirani’s technical bravura, but also her sensitive treatment of subjects that centered on women. The freedom and animation of the drawing finds close comparables throughout Sirani’s oeuvre.

Elisabetta Sirani’s authorship of this drawing was confirmed by Catherine Johnson and Dr. Stephen Pepper at the time of its sale at Christie’s London in 1996. It has more recently been confirmed by Dr. Babette Bohn upon firsthand inspection. Bohn has suggested that the drawing is a relatively early work by Sirani, dating it to no later than 1660, as the scribbly penwork is reminiscent of Giovanni Andrea Sirani’s drawing style. She has further noted that the way Elisabetta framed the composition in rough (not ruled) pen lines is very typical of the artist, but that she is also experimental here in the way she portrays the round, leaded glass windows at the right. Sirani does not often describe interior architecture to a significant degree, but Bohn places our drawing amongst the few exceptional works that do, including the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in the Uffizi (Fig. 1) and the Saint Agatha in Prison at the Ashmolean (Fig. 2). She also notes that the very dark, profuse reliance on wash in our drawing does appear in other sheets by Sirani, such as in Virgin and Child in the Louvre (Fig. 3).

[i] “La poesia muta celebrata dalla pittura loquace. Applausi di nobili ingegni al pennello immortale della Sra. Elisabetta Sirani pittrice bolognese,” 1666. See: Babette Bohn, “Il Fenomeno della Firma: Elisabetta Sirani,” in Elisabetta Sirani. “Pittrice Eroina” 1638–1665, exh. cat., Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna, 2004-2005, pp. 113-114.