Rectangular drawing on white paper with a design for the stern of a vessel with the coat of arms of the Republic of Genoa.

In a totally unusual manner, Cambiaso chooses in this drawing - probably as an experiment, due to the absence of certain relationships with paintings and frescoes - to show the saint from behind, thus amplifying the dramatic effect of the scene. The still partial 'cubing' of the volumes, moreover, typical of Combiaso's mature production, has allowed the work to be placed around 1570. (BOCCARDO, 1999) In the centre, Saint Lawrence being tortured by soldiers.

Cut down in the past, this sheet probably constitutes the preparatory study for a 'Nativity' or a 'Holy Conversation', also in view of the ecstatic attitude of the figure of the Baptist. Due to the careful anatonomic investigation and the svelte style and monumental register of the figure, the work can be referred to the first phase of Cambiaso's production. (BOCCARDO, 1999) The drawing depicts Saint John the Baptist with a lamb at his side.

Anonymous in the Durazzo inventory, the drawing is now ascribed to Guercino, starting with the then still dubious attribution by Mario Bonzi. The genre subject, 'Soldiers counting money', does not currently find any correspondence within the artist's pictorial production, while two different copies, also in drawing, are known to exist, conserved in the Albertina in Vienna (inv. 2370) and in the Pinacoteca di Brera (inv. 340/ID), both attributed to the so-called 'Falsario del Guercino', an 18th century imitator of the master. (BOCCARDO, 1992) The drawing depicts two soldiers sitting and counting money.

The drawing is preparatory for one of the figures of prophets frescoed by Guercino in 1626 on the dome of Piacenza Cathedral. The sheet, drawn on both sides, features portraits of two prophets. On the front, the prophet Zechariah is depicted with his arms raised and a bearded face, while the back shows the prophet Jeremiah in a pensive pose.

The collection of drawings and prints of the Emilian school in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso is one of the most important on an international level: it consists of around 300 sheets, donated in 1848 to the city's collections by the Genoese nobleman Marcello Durazzo (1790-1848) - a refined and expert connoisseur of ancient graphics - who, while staying in Bologna, had acquired, through the last heirs of Guercino and his pupils and grandsons Benedetto and Cesare Gennari, autograph sheets by the master or belonging to his workshop. Among others, the large nude study presented here, formerly the property of Cesare Gennari (1637-1688), stands out for its 'modernity' and timeless beauty: in greased charcoal on grey paper, it is an example of the artist's graphic style capable of seductive softness and skilful shading, with atmospheric and 'painterly' results even in monochrome, perhaps reminiscent of the lesson of the tonal painting of the Venetians, from Palma to Titian, so important for the artist from his youth. Moreover, we know from sources that it was precisely at this time, between 1616 and 1618, that the artist would have animated an 'Academy of the Nude' in Cento, his home town, for the practice of drawing. It is probably a live study, due to the immediacy with which the little wall, beehive, grass and fence on which the bird rests lightly are rendered in the background. The drawing depicts a naked male figure lying down.

The drawing is the last of three projects kept at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe di Palazzo Rosso, made by Reni at the end of 1613 for the altarpiece of the church of Santa Maria della Pietà. The latter, only completed in 1616 with some variations to the present drawing, was commissioned to him on the occasion of a complex programme of reorganisation of Bologna's welfare structures. Study for the Beggars' Pieta.

The sheet is one of several drawings, belonging to the civic collections, by Lorenzo De Ferrari, preparatory to the decoration of the Galleria dorata in Palazzo Tobia Pallavicini. (Carrega-Cataldi, today Chamber of Commerce, Genoa). See for further details BOCCARDO 1999, cat. 79, and BOCCARDO, in I Protagonisti. Capolavori a Genova 1600-1750, 2022, cat. 9, p. 184) The Three Graces.

Among Gregorio De Ferrari's most scenographic and personal sheets are certainly his refined projects for interior decoration, of which the drawing under examination is an exemplary model: these are preparatory studies for the layout and furnishing of walls and, sometimes, portions of vaults in noble rooms, for which the artist studies on paper architectural scores, stucco ornaments, the shape and arrangement of squares for mirrors and paintings. In a fully Baroque perspective, Gregorio imagines every detail of these spectacular 'wings', including furnishing and decorative elements to be then translated into different materials and by other hands: not only painting, therefore, but also stucco, carved and gilded wood, glass. The decorative repertoire is that of the late 17th century, but with a sensitivity and grace that already anticipates the following century, with an abundance of volutes, curls, cartouches and phytomorphic whorls, arranged on the paper in symmetrical solutions, as in this case, or in alternative proposals to be submitted to the client, as in the case of the beautiful sheet, still in the Genoese civic collections, with a Project for the decoration of the hall and vault with a mythological scene (Fall of Icarus?) (inv. D2159), very finished and perhaps intended as a model to be kept in the workshop for possible new requests. Of the drawing in question, we know in detail the occasion of commissioning, destination and final realisation, albeit in forms that are not entirely consistent with those of the model on paper. In fact, in the sheet we recognise a rather advanced design idea for one of the rooms in the flat of Anton Giulio II Brignole Sale in the mezzanine of Palazzo Rosso, and precisely for the first of the three rooms that can be traced back to the decorative intervention of the first decade of the 18th century. The dining room, known as 'della grotta', and the bedroom, frescoed and furnished under the direction of Domenico Parodi and again by Gregorio De Ferrari, are also preserved from this phase of work in the 'Mezzarie'. All the work had to be completed by 1710, the year of Brignole-Sale's death, whose figures are painted, in medallions, on the doors of the entire flat, within a complex and very early chinoiserie decoration very different from the phytomorphic spirals sketched on the doors of Gregorio's design. (PRIARONE, in MUSEI SUPERBI, 2022) Project for the decoration of a mezzanine wall.

The collection of portraits on cerulean paper by Ottavio Leoni (Rome 1578-1630) preserved in Genoa's civic collections comprises 50 sheets and is of great importance in terms of quality and chronological variety, spanning the master's entire career from the end of the 16th century to the first thirty years of the 17th century. The range of characters documented in the portraits is also very varied, providing a vivid snapshot of Roman society in the early 17th century. Their names have been identified thanks to historical and artistic research and the inscriptions on the sheets, some autographed, others from collections, sometimes partially faded and cut. Among the figures “photographed” by Leoni, the Genoese collection includes portraits of nobles, such as Vittoria Caetani dell'Aquila d'Aragona, Marquis Paris Pinelli and Alessandro VII Sforza, Duke of Segni; portraits of princes and princesses, such as Maria Felice Peretti or the Prince of Castiglione; cardinals, such as Monsignor Gerolamo Grimaldi, Cardinal of Trinità dei Monti; but also figures from different social backgrounds, prominent in Rome at the time, such as the composer and organist Paolo Quagliati. There are also faces that have remained ‘anonymous’, both aristocrats and humble commoners: examples include the sheets with Portraits of a Man and a Woman or those with A Monk and a Child, depicted individually and then arranged in pairs within a single blue paper passe-partout with an elegant gold border by a collector between the 18th and 19th centuries. The sheets in Genoa belong to different periods of Ottavio Leoni's career: there are older portraits, dating back to the end of the 16th century and characterised by more marked and continuous contours, more insistent, outlined only in black “pencil” (an example is a Portrait of a Young Man); others in which black pencil strokes are accompanied by white chalk, as in the case of the famous Portrait of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua; finally, others dating from the last phase of the artist's career, between the second and third decades of the 17th century, in which there is a more nuanced use of red and black pencils and chalk, with more delicate passages and soft coloured shading: the two Portraits of a Man and a Woman, shown here, mounted in a single passe-partout, belong to this period, in which the use of red pencil is highly characteristic. Some of Ottavio Leoni's drawings preserved in the Drawings and Prints Cabinet of Palazzo Rosso - all of which came into the collection through Marcello Durazzo's bequest to the civic library in 1848 - bear the inscription “Ulisse Aldrovandi 1799”, an interesting indication of their previous provenance from the collections of Count Ulisse Aldrovandi, patron, collector and amateur painter of the late 18th century, of the Aldrovandi Marescotti family of Bologna. Aldrovandi, an academic of fine arts together with his brother Carlo Filippo, was in contact with artists and writers in his city and had established a sort of academy in his own home, where he had gathered paintings - particularly Nordic ones - but also drawings, prints and art books. Male and female portraits.