Giulio Benso

Giulio Benso (Pieve del Tecco 1601-1668) Apollo and Marsyas (recto); A man lying on his back (verso) with inscription '[...] Benso' traces of black chalk, pen and brown ink (recto); black chalk(verso) 5 1/8 x 8¼ in. (13 x 21 cm.) Provenance Anonymous sale; Christie's, Rome, 19 December 1986, lot1188.

Auktion A152 Lot 3405 - 26 March 2010 13:30 BENSO, GIULIO (1592 Pievo di Teco 1668) The mourning of Christ. Brown pen, with old wove paper backing. Inscribed on backing: Luca Cambiaso. 13.1 x 11.8 cm. CHF 1 000.- / 1 500.- € 680.- / 1 010.- BENSO, GIULIO (1592 Pievo di Teco 1668) Beweinung Christi. Feder in Braun Mit altem Bütten hinterlegt. Dort alt bezeichnet: Luca Cambiaso. 13,1 x 11,8 cm. CHF 1 000.- / 1 500.- € 680.- / 1 010.-

Giulio Benso (Pieve di Teco 1592-1668) The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen with number '221' pen and brown ink, brown wash 7 7/8 x 6 3/8 in. (199 x 161 mm.) Provenance A Genoese (?) collector with corresponding numbering '221'. William H. Crocker (1861-1937), Burlingame, California; thence by descent to his son Charles Crocker (1904-61), San Francisco; thence by descent to the present owners. Lot Notes We are grateful to Dr. Mary Newcome for confirming the attribution to Benso.

Pen and brown ink and wash over traces of black chalk; triangular shape; bears various inscriptions in several hands and numbering top center: 204; Palma Giovane/...jacop. o /il Vecchio ; sessanta; Benzo Genovese and several others cut PROVENANCEWith Galerie de Bayser, Paris; acquired in 1995 CATALOGUE NOTEAs an adolescent, Benso left his native town and came to Genoa, where he made such a strong impression on Giovanni Carlo Doria, the city's most important patron, that he entered the workshop of Giovanni Battista Paggi, the leading artist of the early seventeenth-century Genoese school. Consequently, the young Benso came to be influenced by numerous artists, not only Paggi and his master, Luca Cambiaso, but also Vouet and Procaccini, who were in Genoa at the end of the second decade. Benso painted the subject of the Assumption many times. The frequency with which the theme occurs in his work may be due to the fact that in 1637 the Genoese Senate declared the Virgin the patron saint of Genoa and its republic. Both the artist's fame and that of the subject were not, however, confined to the city: in 1644 Benso painted the same subject for the Schottenkirche in Vienna.1 The present representation replaces the Apostles who witnessed the event with two kneeling bishops, one of whom may be St. Ambrose. Stylistically, the Horvitz drawing can be compared to a sheet depicting Christ and the Adulterous Woman, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.2 In both drawings, we see the same monumental figures, but combined with free, expressive pen-work and a lightness in the use of wash which seems particularly sensitive for the artist. 1. M. Newcome, Genoese Baroque Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Binghampton, New York, University Art Gallery, 1972, p. 19 2. See C. Bambach and N.M. Orenstein, Genoa, Drawings and Prints 1530-1800, exhibition catalogue, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996, p. 14, cat. no. 2

Giulio Benso (Pieve del Tecco circa 1601-1668)
The Ascension
Add. Notes: figure studies (verso) and with inscription 'Luca Giordano' on the mount black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, on traces of an 18th Century mount 15 3/8 x 10¼ in. (392 x 261 mm.)
Notes: The attribution to Benso has kindly been confirmed by Dr Mary Newcome Schleier in a communication dated 4 May 2007.