ERCOLE SETTI (MODENA 1530-1618)

The idiosyncratic sharp linear technique seen here compares with a group of drawings attributed to Ercole Setti by Walter Vitzthum in 1955 (‘Shorter notices’, in The Burlington Magazine, 1955, 97, no. 629, pp. 252-254), and in particular with two sheets depicting scenes from the Old Testament in the Graphische Sammlung, Munich (inv. 3105; op. cit., fig. 20, ill.) and in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. 60.66.17; J. Bean, L. Turčić, 15th and 16th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982, New York, no. 239, ill.). An album of drawings by Setti from a private collection, Turin (of which six were sold at Sotheby’s, London, 26 March 1976, lots 51-56) contained popular market scenes (see Franca Zava Boccazzi, ‘An Unpublished Album of Drawings by Ercole Setti’, Master Drawings, 1968, 6, no. 4, pp. 355-363, figs. 415-423, ill.).