Francesco Fracanzano
Monopoli 1612 – Naples 1656
Roman Triumph
Inscribed 87 upper left.
Pen and brown ink, black chalk. Oval.
Bibliography – Marty de Cambiaire Gallery, Dessins napolitains, Neapolitan drawings, 1550-1800, Paris, 2014, p. 22-23, n° 7, illustrated.
230 x 305 mm – 9 1/16 x 12 in.
The attribution of this Roman triumphis due to Viviana Farina who has recognized the hand of Francesco Fracanzano in the dry and nervous manner of this drawing, obviously connected to the Neapolitan milieu of the 17thcentury. The author of some indisputable masterpieces of Neapolitan painting, visible in Church San Gregorio Armeno, Fracanzano is a rare draughtsman. For the past twenty years however, it has been possible to reconstitute a coherent corpus to which this drawing can be added on the basis of stylistic comparisons, particularly with two sheets in the British Museum.
“A master and connoisseur of antiquities” according to the Neapolitan writer Giuseppe Campanile (circa 1616 – 1674), Fracanzano could not fail to take an interest in the subject of Roman triumph, which was made fashionable in Naples in the 1630s by artists such as Micco Spadaro, as pointed out by Viviana Farina.
