Seated Dog

This is a preparatory study for the white dog in the lower right corner of Francesco Solimena's enormous but sadly destroyed fresco Massacre of the Giustiniani at Chios. The painting was commissioned by the Giustiniani family for the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa and executed 1710-15. A large-scale, highly finished oil sketch by Solimena in the Capodimonte in Naples records the appearance of the lost painting, and the scale of the dog in the Minneapolis drawing appears to be the exact size of the dog in the oil sketch.