FRANCESCO MELZI (MILAN 1491/93-1570 VAPRIO D’ADDA) - photo 1
FRANCESCO MELZI (MILAN 1491/93-1570 VAPRIO D’ADDA) - photo 2
FRANCESCO MELZI (MILAN 1491/93-1570 VAPRIO D’ADDA) - photo 3
FRANCESCO MELZI (MILAN 1491/93-1570 VAPRIO D’ADDA) - photo 4

FRANCESCO MELZI (MILAN 1491/93-1570 VAPRIO D’ADDA)

Lot 1
26.03.2025 15:00UTC +01:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationFrance, Paris
ID 1389941
Lot 1 | FRANCESCO MELZI (MILAN 1491/93-1570 VAPRIO D’ADDA)
Estimate value
€ 8 000 – 12 000
FRANCESCO MELZI (MILAN 1491/93-1570 VAPRIO D’ADDA)
Étude de six chats (recto); Étude d'une figure nue et d'un cheval (verso)
plume et encre brune
13,6 x 9,2 cm (5 3/8 x 3 5/8 in.)




Provenance

Avec Mia Weiner, New York.
Vente anonyme; Christie's, New York, 28 janvier 2021, lot 3.



Literature

C. Pedretti, The Drawings and Miscellaneous Papers of Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, II, Londres, 1987, pp. 123-124, fig. 156 (recto) et fig. 158 (verso).



Further details

FRANCESCO MELZI, STUDY OF SIX CATS (RECTO); STUDY OF A NUDE FIGURE AND OF A MAN ON A HORSE (VERSO), PEN AND BROWN INK

Francesco Melzi joined the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in Milan around 1508 and became his faithful pupil. The artist went with Leonardo to Rome and then followed him to France, where he stayed until the master’s death in 1519. It is largely due to Melzi’s efforts that Leonardo’s notebooks and drawings have survived. Melzi brought Leonardo’s material back to Milan and, according to Vasari, kept everything as a revered relics. These studies of cats were copied after one of Leonardo’s most charming drawings, the sheet with Cats, lions and a dragon in the Royal Collection at Windsor (RCIN 912363). In his drawing Leonardo studies the cats in pairs or alone in many different positions - lying asleep, playing and fighting - as he was interested in their flexibility and had planned to write a treatise on the movement of animals (Pedretti, op. cit., p. 123). The verso shows a faint study of figures that could also be after one of Leonardo’s now lost sketches. We know that Melzi copied his master’s drawings as part of his artistic training, and other studies after Leonardo’s drawings have been attributed to him such as, for example, the drawing with A grotesque couple in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 1975.96).
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