Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)

Carlo Maratti

1625–1713 · Red chalk on blue paper · Drawings and Prints

Study for the head of Saint Ambrose in an altarpiece representing the ‘Virgin with Saints Francis of Sales, Nicholas of Myra, and Ambrose’, painted by Maratti during a visit to the Marches in 1672 and intended for the high altar of the church of Saint Nicola in Ancona. The altarpiece is now in the Pinacoteca Comunale, Ancona (Marchini 1960, p. 84, repr.) The sheet is pasted down on an old mat which has been lined in red ink and annotated in the same red ink "Carlo Maratti." This mat is presumably of the Spencer Collection and by the same mounter as the mat on the inv. no 61.131.1, a drawing by Stefano della Bella, also from the Spencer Collection.

Artist

Carlo Maratti

Date

1625–1713

Medium

Red chalk on blue paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Rogers Fund, 1963