Filippo Napoletano - Ships on a Stormy Sea

Medium	Pen and two shades of brown ink and brown wash
Dimensions	16.5 x 25.7 cm (6¹/₂ x 10¹/₈ inches)
Gallery	Stephen Ongpin Fine Art

Description
Technical

Both thematically and stylistically, the present sheet may be compared with a number of drawings by Filippo Napoletano, such as a large and impressive Naval Battlein the Louvre. Another drawing of ships on a stormy sea, more freely executed in pen and brown wash, is in the Art Institute of Chicago, while a study of a Shipwreck in the Albertina in Vienna may also be compared to the present sheet. Perhaps the closest compositional comparison, however, may be made – as Marco Chiarini has noted - with a drawing of Boats in a Storm in the collection of the Biblioteca Academiei Romî in Bucharest.

The attribution of this drawing to Filippo Napoletano was confirmed by the late Marco Chiarini. A painting of a similar subject and composition appeared on the art market in Rome in the 1990s with a plausible attribution to Agostino Tassi.

Medium: Pen and two shades of brown ink and brown wash
Dimensions: 16.5 x 25.7 cm (6¹/₂ x 10¹/₈ inches)
Provenance: Mathias Komor, New York
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 2 July 1990, lot 155 (as attributed to Agostino Tassi)
Galerie Paul Prouté, Paris, in 1993
Anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 20 October 2000, lot 160
P. & D. Colnaghi, London, in 2003
Private collection, Middlesex
Thence by descent.

Literature: Marco Chiarini, ed., I disegni italiani della Biblioteca dell’Accademia di Romania a Bucarest: Catalogo generale, Florence, 2004, p.74, under no.XXXVII (entry by Marco Chiarini); Marco Chiarini, Teodoro Filippo di Liano detto Filippo Napoletano 1589-1629: Vite e opere, Florence, 2007, pp.460-461, no.388.

Categories: Paintings, Drawings & Prints