Lot 619 | Bartolomeo Passerotti | Sea Monster

PASSEROTTI, BARTOLOMEO
Bologna 1529 - 1592
attributed

Title: Sea Monster.
Technique: Pen and India ink on beige paper.
Mounting: Glued at the edges.
Measurement: 23 x
17,5cm.
Notation: Inscribed lower centre: "Raffael Sanzio da Urbino".
Frame/Pedestal: Mat.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Bartolomeo Passerotti was one of the most important Bolognese artists of the 16th century. At the age of twenty-two he stayed in Rome, where - as his biographers report - he devoted himself to the extensive study of drawing and the technique of etching. By 1560, the artist had settled in Bologna, where he opened a studio and is still praised in contemporary sources for his drawing and colouristic skills.
In the 1570s, he probably became friends with Ulisse Aldrovandi, a famous naturalist, botanist and entomologist from Bologna, who founded one of the first natural history museums that became famous throughout Europe. The close relationship between the painter and the naturalist is evident in the paintings and drawings of these years, for example in Passerotti's "Bestiary", which depicts sharks, eagles, crocodiles, cocks and dogs, and in the market scenes with the butcher's shops and fishmongers. Curiosity about nature, especially the sea, is influenced by the scientific illustration promoted by Aldrovandi and his encyclopaedic collection.
Perhaps the present drawing was made in the 1570s, depicting a sea monster in Passerotti's typical technique - pen and ink on paper. The work is almost identical to another depiction attributed to the artist in the Gallery of Prints of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (217 x 136 mm, Inv. 538 O).

We are grateful to Marzia Faietti, Bologna, for suggesting the attribution of the present drawing on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.