(San Matteo della Decima 1728 – Ravenna 1781)
The attribution of this depiction of figures resting in a landscape to the Bolognese painter Ubaldo Gandolfi is suggested by the peculiar use of pen and diluted ink and by the typical nervous and snappy construction of the hands and of the bodies’ profiles 1.
The comparison with Ubaldo's vast graphic oeuvre suggests a late dating, around the seventh decade of the eighteenth century, when his style dried up into simplified and immediately perceptible compositions. See, e.g., the study for San Francis in meditation in the Uffizi, preparatory for an altarpiece made for the Company of Santa Maria del Baraccano in 1774, or the one in a private collection with Saints Sebastian and Rocco, connected to a painting completed in the same year2.
Although it cannot be excluded that our drawing has been executed in preparation of an otherwise unknown painting, its extreme refinement, as well as the presence of a pen outline that delimits the boundaries of the composition, suggests that it could have as well be intended as an independent work3.
The subject of the sheet is not identifiable with certainty4. The evocation of the natural element and the watercourse gives the image a bucolic and poetic tone, reinforced by the classic appearance of the naked male figure on the left5.
1 The main reference on Ubaldo is the monograph by Biagi Maino 1990 and the volume, richly illustrated and which includes works by the other members of the Gandofi family, of Bagni 1992. To these can be added Venezia / Bologna 1987, Ottawa / Little Rock 1993, and Venice 2018. On the drawings see, specifically, Czére 1993, pp. 464-469 and Cazort Taylor 1976, pp. 159-165, 214-225, with a suggestive characterisation of Ubaldo's pen style.
2 Ubaldo Gandolfi, Saint Francis in meditation, Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, 175 × 130 mm. Florence, GDSU, inv. 4156 S; Bagni 1992, pp. 157-158, 153-165.
3 See, e.g., the Fountain Study of Palazzo Rosso in Genoa (Bagni 1992, p. 602).
4 See Bagni 1992, pp. 119-138, for a comparison.
5 It can be observed that the watermark with the crossed keys surmounted by the canopy (a reference to the papal banner) is typically Bolognese; see the watermarks filed in badigit.comune.bologna.it.