Felice Damiani (Gubbio 1530-1608)

Until recently regarded as a work by Niccolò Martinelli, il Trometta, following John Gere’s 1963 article on that artist’s drawings, the present sheet was attributed correctly only in 2013 by Denis Morganti, who connected it to Damiani’s 1594 altarpiece in S. Agostino, Gubbio. Damiani was a successful artist, but his identity as a draughtsman has been obscured, his work subsumed under the names of other 16th-century Italian artists like the Zuccari or, Taddeo Zuccaro’s pupil Trometta. Damiani’s known drawn oeuvre therefore is very small: only six drawings can be confidently given to the artist. This drawing is particularly close to The Visitation in the British Museum (inv. 2000,0325.11), recognized in 2001 by Hugo Chapman as a study for an altarpiece, dated 1594, in the Santuario della Madonna dei Lumi in San Severino Marche (H. Chapman, ‘Two drawings by Felice Damiani’, Apollo, 2001, p. 24).