Ubaldo GANDOLFI

The present sheet may be an early preparatory study, with several significant differences, for Ubaldo Gandolfi’s monumental altarpiece of The Finding of the True Cross, painted in 1775 for the Cathedral of Sant’Eusebio in Vercelli. The painting, which is signed and dated 1775 and has an arched top like this drawing, is believed to have been commissioned for the Duomo by Monsignor Giuseppe Maria Langosco di Stroppiana, Vicar General of Vercelli, who nine years later ordered a Martyrdom of Saint Eusebius by Gaetano Gandolfi for the same church. (The commission for the altarpiece of The Finding of the True Cross has also been credited to Count Eusebio Avogadro della Motta, a member of one of the leading families of Vercelli, for his family chapel in the Cathedral.) An oil sketch bozzetto by Ubaldo Gandolfi for the Vercelli altarpiece is in an Italian private collection, while a very large and finished drawing in red chalk for the composition is also in a private collection and a compositional study in pen and ink is in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. An autograph replica of the present sheet, of similar dimensions, is in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa.

In 1792, over a decade after Ubaldo Gandolfi’s death, his younger brother Gaetano painted his own version of The Finding of the True Cross in a large canvas today in the collection of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, which also houses a bozzetto for the same painting. While much of Gaetano’s composition is derived from Ubaldo’s Vercelli canvas of 1775, some elements, such as the fact that Saint Helen is shown embracing the cross, are more akin to the present sheet.