The Death of Germanicus

Gaetano Gandolfi was a member of the distinguished Bolognese Gandolfi family of artists, active in the second half of the 18th century. A successful Neoclassical painter and prolific draftsman, Gaetano's activity as a printmaker is less well known. Just 22 etchings by the artist are known, among them a number of reproductive prints after important 17th-century paintings like this one. Here Gandolfi reproduced Nicolas Poussin's celebrated painting The Death of Germanicus, one of the premier objects in Mia's collection. He executed this etching during an otherwise unrecorded trip to Rome, when the picture was still in the possession of the Barberini family and hanging in their renowned palace. The red-ink impression is highly unusual in this period but seems to be related to Gandolfi's activities in drawing. In the late 1750s, the young artist was commissioned to execute a series of copy drawings after great altarpieces in Bologna, and a number of these sheets were executed in red chalk. With the red ink, Gandolfi appears to be attempting to achieve a similar drawn look in print.