Bowdoin College Museum of Art

The Visitation

Artist: Camillo Procaccini (Italian, ca. 1555-1629)

Medium: red chalk with touches of black chalk on paper

Dimensions: 5 1/16 in. x 7 1/2 in. (12.86 cm. x 19.05 cm.)

Credit Line: Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III

Accession Number: 1811.104

• "G-6./G-22."
  Type: inscription
  Location: verso of former mount (removed)
  Materials: pen and ink

• James Bowdoin III( Collector, Boston) - 1811.
• Bowdoin College Museum of Art( Museum, Brunswick, Maine) 1811- . Bequest

• Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
  • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 5/17/1985 - 7/7/1985)
  • Clark Art Institute. ( 9/14/1985 - 10/27/1985)
  • University of Kansas. ( 1/19/1986 - 3/2/1986)
  • Art Gallery of Ontario. ( 5/17/1986 - 6/29/1986)
• Drawing on Basics
  • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 10/14/1993 - 12/19/1993)

Type: catalogue
Author: Henry Johnson
Document Title: Catalogue of the Bowdoin College Art Collections
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: no. 135
Remarks: (as Unknown)
Section Title: Pt. I, The Bowdoin Drawings
Date: 1885

Type: catalogue
Author: Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Document Title: Bowdoin Museum of Fine Arts, Walker Art Building
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: no. 135
Remarks: (as Unknown)
Publisher: Bowdoin College
Section Title: Descriptive Catalogue of the . . .
Date: 1930

Type: exhibition catalogue
Author: David P. Becker
Document Title: Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Location: pp. 94-95
Reference: no. 43 (illus.)
Publisher: Bowdoin College
Date: 1985
			
		

After remaining stubbornly among the anonymous Italian drawings for years, this sheet was recently recognized independently by Nicholas Turner and Philip Pouncey as a characteristic work of Procaccini. A member of a dynasty of painters, Camillo was trained in Bologna by his father, Ercole (1520—1595), and moved in 1587 to Milan, where he remained for the rest of his career. He traveled to Rome ca. 1580.

Procaccini executed at least four paintings of the Visitation, and the Bowdoin study is preparatory to his fresco of the subject finished by 1609 for the nave of Piacenza Cathedral.¹ He had been called for the commission in 1605 by Duke Ranuccio Farnese and shared the task with Lodovico Carracci. Procaccini also painted a Death of the Virgin, two Sibyls, and a Pentecost for the cathedral.² The Bowdoin study corresponds closely with the finished painting, though the former has apparently been cropped at the top edge. Nancy Neilson knows of no other studies for this painting.³ Other Procaccini drawings very close to this one in their energized red chalk technique are David Playing Before Saul in the Fogg Art Museum⁴ and Flaying of Marsyas in the British Museum.⁵

1. Neilson 1979, p. 55, no. 77, repr. fig. 146.

2. Ibid., p. 57, under no. 80.

3. Letter to the author, 29 August 1984.

4. Inv. no. 1932.292 (repr. Neilson 1979, fig. 86).

5. Inv. no. 1939-3-11-24 (repr. Neilson 1979, fig. 316).

Commentary credited to David P. Becker (or not otherwise captioned) appeared in his catalogue Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College (Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1985).