Attributed to ANTONIO CIRCIGNANI, called IL POMARANCIO (c.1574-c.1629)

 
THE ARCHANGELS MICHAEL AND GABRIEL WITH PUTTI
 
 
Bears inscription verso in pen & ink Del Pomarancio
Pen & ink with black chalk and wash, heightened with white, on brown-washed laid paper
26 x 19.1 cm | 10.2 x 7.5 in
 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Salerno, 'L'opera di Antonio Pomarancio', in Commentari: rivista di critica e storia dell'arte, no..2 (1952), pp.128-134
E. Giffi, ‘Alcune proposte per Antonio Pomarancio’, in Bollettino d'arte , no.19 (May-June 1983), pp. 17-30;
L. Barroero,’ A proposito di Antonio Pomarancio’, in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Federico Zeri, vol. 2, 1984, pp. 513-523
 
 
 
 
 
 
The present work's attribution is predicated in large part on the words inscribed in pen & ink in an early hand to the verso: Del Pomarancio. 
 
 
Three artists bore this name, derived from a small town in Tuscany: Niccòlo Circignani (Pomarance, c.1517 - c.1596, Città della Pieve), his son Antonio, and Cristoforo Roncalli (1552-1626), the last of whom was Niccolò's student. Of these three, one can immediately rule the elder Circignani out, as his graphic oeuvre is utterly different stylistically. 
 
Cristoforo Roncalli worked for the most part in chalks when drawing, tending much more towards Cavaliere d'Arpino and the Roman school. He did collaborate on occasion with his teacher's son Antonio, but their styles are easily distinguishable. 
 
 
Antonio, perhaps the least well-known and least understood of the trio, remains an enigma when it comes to his drawings: there are just three whose attributions are resolute, [1] despite the fact that several dozen frescoes and paintings by his hand survive, as well as just over a dozen prints made after his designs. 
 
 
 
 
The complications above give very little to work with when examining this drawing with an open mind towards the inscription; however, the more distinctive elements of Antonio's paintings do give us some insight into how his drawings (which may be very few in number anyway of course, depending on his working methods) could appear, in the absence of a finished painting that corresponds directly. [2] 
 
Antonio's figures from the middle of his career can be defined by partly by their expressive, open faces, much like the central putti in the lower register of our work and especially the angel Gabriel to the lower right (see fig. I), in sharp contrast to his father Niccoló's more angular and less defined facial types in his graphic work. From the 1620s onwards, Antonio adopted a very Caravaggesque manner, moving away from the works which we associate here with the present sheet. 
 
 
 
Beyond the stylistic similarities between our drawing's figures and the painted figures of Antonio, there is a very clear connection between two specific putti in our sheet and two in one of the artist's frescoes for the Palazzo Altemps in Rome. Although not exact copies, their poses are almost identical, and their arrangement (adjacent to each other in both our drawing and the fresco) suggests that the artist could have referred back to our sheet, or perhaps a connected previous (and low lost) commission when considering the possible arrangement of the many putti in the fresco in Rome (see fig. II). 
 
With so few drawings, and the knowledge that not all of the artist's paintings have survived or been identified, the inscription on our drawing - which seems at first to be so unusual - coupled with the very close similarities between these individual putti, opens the door to a potential attribution and an exciting re-examination of an almost-unknown body of drawings by Antonio, himself an oft-under-appreciated, but important, artist.