Saint Benedict Exorcising Demons from a Young Woman

Many early collectors of drawings stamped the works in their possession with a personal collector’s stamp. This anonymous Italian drawing passed through at least five different collections in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see provenance below). Collectors often annotated their drawings with inventory numbers, price codes, and the name of the artist they thought drew the work. Artists rarely signed drawings before the eighteenth century, certainly not informal sketches like the present sheet. The attribution of this drawing to the Sienese painter Ventura Salimbeni (1568–1613), which is inscribed on both the mount and the drawing, was made by a later owner. That this work was in an Italian collection of primarily Florentine sixteenth and seventeenth-century drawings suggests that it may be Florentine instead. There are many repairs and extensive restorations throughout the sheet, making it difficult to identify its original author. It was in England by the mid-17th century, perhaps as early as 1657, if the star stamp in the lower right corner can be identified with Jerome Lanier, who died that year [see Jeremy Woods 2003]. It was certainly in England before Nicholas Lanier's death in 1666. The co-existence of Lugt 2736 and 2885 would seem to establish a terminus ante quem of perhaps 1657, or more securely 1666, for the dissolution of the unidentified Florentine collection. Every mark on this mount is unclear or rubbed, and condition issues leave open the possibility that this drawing was laid down into an unrelated mount.