Francisco El Viejo Herrera

Francesco de Herrera the Elder (c.1590-1656) A saint in profile to the left, half-length, raising his left hand with calculations (verso, laid down) brush and grey-blue ink 148 x 111 mm. Provenance Frank Hall Standish. King Louis-Philippe; Paris, 6 December 1852, part of lot 583. Lot Notes Part of a series of about seventeen drawings depicting apostles and saints, half-length, all of approximately the same size and drawn with grey-blue wash, D. Angulo and A.E. Prez Snchez, A Corpus of Spanish Drawings, Seville 1600-1650, Oxford, 1985, nos. 9-23, pls. IV-VIII. Most of the drawings are in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, and some in New York, Munich, Madrid and Ottawa. Jonathan Brown in his article in Master Drawings 'Spanish Baroque Drawings in the Sperling Bequest', 1973, XI, p. 377, published the drawings as by Herrera the Younger, an attribution which was dismissed by D. Angulo and A.E. Prez Sanchez in favour of Herrera the Elder. Two drawings from this group (D. Angulo and A.E. Prez Snchez, op. cit., nos. 24-5, pl. VIII; sold at Sotheby's Madrid, 2 December 1980, part of lot 636) have the same mounts as the present drawing. To this group of single apostles should be added three drawings, also from the Standish Collection, of pairs of apostles in the same technique, D. Angulo and A.E. Prez Snchez, op. cit., nos. 26-8, pl. VIII.