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GIOVANNI LANFRANCO (Parma 1582 - Rome 1647) STANDING DRAPED MALE FIGURE AND TWO STUDIES OF HEADS (recto); A BISHOP SAINT (verso)
Black chalk on blue paper partly faded; 418 x 255 mm. Watermark: anchor in circle with trefoil above.
The drawing on the recto is a preliminary study for the figure of St. John the Evangelist painted by Lanfranco in a lunette near a window of the nave in the church of SS. Apostoli, Naples. The decoration of SS. Apostoli was the most important and challenging commission of Lanfranco's career; he frescoed, between 1638 and 1646, the choir, the crossing and the nave of the Neapolitan church. Another preparatory drawing for the figure of the Saint is in Madrid, Prado (Inv. F.D. 103). See Manuela B. Mena Marqués, 'Museo del Prado, catalogo de dibujos, VI, dibujos italianos del siglo XVII', Madrid, 1983; p. 110, fig. 194.
The drawing on the verso is connected with both the designs which Lanfranco created (1629-1633) for two of the four pendentives in the chapel of the Madonna della Colonna in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. The designs, depicting St. Bonaventure and St. Cyril, were executed in mosaics by G. B. Calandra. See Erich Schleier, 'Disegni di Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647)', exhibition catalogue, Florence, 1983; cat. no. XXVII, figs. 140, 142.

Giovanni Lanfranco was pupil of Agostino Carracci, when Agostino was working for the Duke of Parma, and later of Annibale Carracci, in his large and prominent Roman workshop. The most decisive influence on Lanfranco's work, however, was not just the classicism of the Carracci brothers but the dynamic illusionism of the paintings by Correggio in Parma's cathedral. Lanfranco translated Correggio’s 16th-century style into a Roman Baroque idiom. In his first years in Rome Lanfranco contributed to the works of Annibale's studio but by 1605 he was obtaining independent commissions. After Annibale Carracci died in 1609, and with the Emilian school of painting temporarily out of favor, Lanfranco returned to Parma for two years. Returning to Rome the end of 1612-1615, initially Lanfranco and three other main Carracci trainees, Reni, Albani, and Domenichino, competed for Roman patronage. Reni, however, was soon to depart to Naples and then Bologna. For the following decades in Rome, Lanfranco and Domenichino developed a bitter rivalry for the main fresco commissions. Lanfranco's crowning masterpiece, and one of the major church fresco decoration of the late 1620s, was his 'Assumption of the Virgin' frescoed on the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle, completed in 1627. In 1631, Lanfranco was named 'Principe' (Prince) of the Academy of St. Luke, the artist's guild in Rome. From 1634 to 1646, Lanfranco worked in Naples, his best known work there being the decoration of the dome in the chapel of San Gennaro in the cathedral (1641-46).