Live Auction 8029Old Master & Early British Drawings & Watercolours
Alessandro Magnasco (Genoa 1667-1749)
Lot 23 Property from a distinguished Canadian Collection

Alessandro Magnasco (Genoa 1667-1749)

The Nativity

Closed5 July 2011

Price Realised

GBP 23,750

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Alessandro Magnasco (Genoa 1667-1749)
The Nativity
with inscription 'Castiglione' and with number '4'
traces of black chalk, brush and brown and grey wash, heightened with white, inscribed arch, on blue paper, unframed
12½ x 7 7/8 in. (31.5 x 19.9 cm.)

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 6 July 1993, lot 77.

Specialist note

Related to one of a series of four oil sketches previously in the Bossi Collection, Genoa. The bozzetto of The Nativity is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. 50-4-11), while the three other bozzetti represent The Flight into Egypt (Cleveland, Museum of Art, inv. 48.13), The Visitation (present location unknown) and The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum, inv. 47-93). For further details on the series, which cannot be related to any finished works by Magnasco, see Castellotti (op. cit.).

We are grateful to Dr Mary Newcome Schleier for confirming the attribution to Magnasco on the basis of a photograph.