14. Battista Franco, dit Il Semolei (Venise 1510-1561) La Fermeté de Mucius Scaevola plume et encre brune sur papier, collé en plein sur un montage Mariette pen and brown ink, on paper, laid down on a Mariette mount 27.7 x 34.9cm (10 7/8 x 13 3/4in). Provenance: Probably Pierre Crozat (1665-1740), without his number, but probably his sale, Paris, 10 April – 13 May, 1741, part of lot 378 (as Girolamo da Carpi), purchased by Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1774) (L.2097) His sale 9 January 1776, part of lot 338 (as Girolamo da Carpi), purchased by Charles Philippe Campion de Tersan (1736-1819) Comte Moritz von Fries (1777-1826) (L.2903) Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913) John Malcolm of Poltalloch (1805-1893), thence by descent to his son-in-law Alfred Erskine Gathorne-Hardy (1845-1918), his number on the reverse (no. 28), thence by descent to his son Geoffrey Malcolm Gathorne-Hardy (1878-1972), thence by descent to his cousin Robert Gathorne-Hardy (1902-1973) His sale, Sotheby's, London, 24 November 1976, lot 11 With Katrin Bellinger, Munich, 1992 With Fonds Finacor, Paris Sale, Christie's, New York, 28 January 1999, lot 34, where purchased by With W. M. Brady, New York, and Thomas Williams, London, where purchased by Christian Adrien Collection, Neuilly-sur-Seine Private Collection, Europe Exhibited: London, P.& D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Loan Exhibition of Drawings by Old Masters from the Collection of Mr. Geoffrey Gathorne-Hardy, 12 October 1971 – 2 January 1972, no 57 Caen, musée des Beaux-Arts, L'Œil et la Passion. Dessins italiens de la Renaissance dans les collections privées françaises, 19 March – 20 June 2011, no 39 Rennes, musée des Beaux-Arts, Dessins de la collection Christian et Isabelle Adrien, 21 March – 2 August, 2012, no 5 Literature: J. C. Robinson, Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters, Forming the Collection of John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Esq., London, 1869, p. 115, no 299 (as Girolamo da Carpi) Hon. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters in the Possession of the Hon. A.E. Gathorne-Hardy, London, 1902, p. 17, no 26 A. Varick Lauder, Notice sur le dessin de Battista Franco, Old Master Drawings, exh. cat., New-York, 2000, no 6, ill. (as Battista Franco) E. Saccomani, 'Battista Franco alla Corte di Urbino: Dai Perduti Affreschi del Duomo ai Modelli per Le Maioliche Istoriate', in Valter Curzi (dir.), Pittura Veneta nelle Marche, Milan, 2000, p. 233, note 107 A. Varick Lauder, Battista Franco. 1510-1561. His Life and Work with Catalogue Raisonné, thesis, Cambridge, 2004, vol. II, p. 490, no 272 DA, IV, fig. 481 A. Varick Lauder, Musée du Louvre, inventaire général des dessins italiens,, vol. VIII, Battista Franco, Paris, 2009, pp. 138, 210-211, under n° 43 and p. 240 under no 70 P. Ramade and others, L'Œil et la Passion. Dessins italiens de la Renaissance dans les collections privées françaises, Paris, 2011, exh. cat., pp. 140-141, no 39 (note by Ramade) P. Rosenburg et al, Dessins de la collection Christian et Isabelle Adrien, 21 March – 2 August, 2012, no 5 (note by A. Varick Lauder) B. Py, Les Dessins italiens de Pierre Crozat (1665-1740) L'œil de Mariette, 2015, p. 240 and note 2 P. Rosenberg and L. Barthélemy-Labeeuw, M.-L. Delcroix, S. Lumetta, Les dessins de la collection Mariette - Écoles italienne et espagnole, Paris, 2019, vol. 2, p. 528, I859 In the catalogue of the sale of Pierre Crozat's collection of drawings (1741), the well-known collector Pierre Jean Mariette, attributed the present drawing, with its illustrious provenance, to Girolamo da Carpi (1501-1556). He further confirmed his attribution to da Carpi by adding a cartouche with the artist's name to the lower centre of his typical blue and gold banded mount for the drawing. The drawing then kept this attribution in the catalogue of the posthumous sale of Mariette's collection of drawings, when the work was offered under lot 338, and quickly sketched during the auction, in the margin of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin's copy of the sale catalogue (see 'La vente Mariette. Le catalogue illustré par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin', Milan, 2011, p. 61). Upheld by all subsequent collectors, the attribution of the work was only questioned for the first time in the catalogue of the Gathorne-Hardy collection by Philippe Pouncey. He suggested that the present sheet could be the work of Battista Franco, a Venetian by birth and Roman by adoption. This suggestion was later shared by other scholars. Very sophisticated and elegant, the style of the work, characterized by a subtle, confident, and incisive line with parallel hatching used to create volume, is indeed typical of Battista Franco. The artist distinguished himself in his lifetime for his paintings, his graphic art (both drawings and etchings), and above all for his interest in the Minor Arts. The subject of the present lot tells the story of Mucius Scaevola, a young Roman nobleman full of pride, who demonstrated his bravery by placing his hand into the fire of an altar without showing any sign of pain. Impressed with this show of courage, the Etruscan king, seen seated on a raised throne to the right, allowed Mucius Scaevola to return to the Roman camp. In the 1999 catalogue and later in the catalogue entry for the work in the exhibition of the Adrien Collection in 2012 (see Literature), Anne Varick Lauder cites a maiolica dish, now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Brunswick (inv. 267), which shows same decorative design and is of the same dimensions as our drawing. She suggests that the present drawing may have been conceived around 1550 as an initial idea for the decoration of a piece of maiolica. The differences between the present drawing and the maiolica dish are minimal and mostly relate to the spatial conception, as the drawing does not seem to take into account the convex shape of the maiolica dish. Further differences can be seen in the landscape of the background and the number of onlookers in the scene. These elements were then reworked in two other drawings, now in the Louvre (Inv. 4948 and Inv. 4949), and presumably executed after the present work as the spatial conception seems to approach the final design. As Vasari recalls his Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1881, vol. VI, pp. 581-582), Duke Guidobaldo II della Rovere, recognised the artist's talent as a draftsman and entrusted him creating designs for maiolica produced in his factory at Castel Durante.