Portrait of an Artist

WESTERN/PAINTING/ITALY; MOLA, PIER FRANCESCO (1612-1666); art market; pen and brown ink, brush and wash 8 3/4 x 6 5/8 inches; Mia N. Weiner, New York, November 1990; Exhibition Catalogue: 0ld Master Drawings, #26; BRILLIANT GIFT; JUN 21 1994; Portrait of an Artist; pen & brown ink, brush & wash. 834 x 658". laid down to 18th c. paper which is inscribed on the verso in a modern hand "G. B. Tiepolo" and is stamped with the collector's marks.; provenance: Meatyard, London, 1928; Dan Fellows Platt (L. 750a & 2066b); Louis de Wild till 1967; Norbert Roesler who purchased the drawing from Victor Spark.; Mola's was a nature sympathetic to practitioners of all the arts and he often took up pen and brush to portray them. At the British Museum, one finds "Three Musicians Seated on the Ground,"(1) imparted with the same vigorous splashes of wash as the present sheet. "Two Cognoscenti Admiring a Painting" (2) is in the Morgan Library. This last subject is again treated, though quite differently, in a drawing in the Oppé Collection. (3) "The Sonnet Vendor" (4) in the collection of Janos Scholz is, in technique, quite like the present drawing, and a vivid, engaging image. In the Metropolitan Museum, there is an energetic sketch of "Artists Drawing in a Studio,"(5) a subject also explored in a British Museum sheet of "Five Artists Seated, Intently Drawing," leaning against boards propped up in their laps.(6) The cap worn by the sitter in the present drawing is worn by three of the artists in the last cited British Museum sheet. In an etching by Masucci of "P. F. Mola Executing a Portrait of Alessandro VII,"(7) Mola himself is depicted in this headgear and wearing the same collar. In a chalk "Self-Portrait of the Artist"(8) this garb is again in evidence. Another half-length portrait of an unknown personage in identical technique and of the same scale is in the British Museum.(9) So similar is this last-mentioned drawing to the present portrait, one might think they were executed within moments of one another. Neither sitter is known. Hopefully, however, in the not too distant future, someone will identify the fellow artist who posed for the present vibrant and intelligent portrait.; 1 Nicholas Turner, "Pier Francesco Mola," 1612 - 1666, Milan, 1989, p. 50, III.44.; 2 Turner, "op. cit." p. 280, III.96.; 3 Turner, "op. cit." pp. 284 - 285, III.104.; 4 "Art in Italy," 1600 - 1700, Detroit, 1965, pp. 38 - 39, illus.; 5 Turner, "op. cit." p. 282, III.100.; 6 British Museum, inventory no. 1895-9-15-710.; 7 Francis Haskell, "Patrons and Painters, Art and Society in Baroque Italy," Avon, 1980, back cover, illus.; 8 Turner, "op. cit," frontispiece.; 9 Inventory no. 1958-10-11-5.