A House with a Dovecote and Trees by the Sea

Carefully studied from nature, this landscape study in a roving perspective or bird's-eye view portrays a house with a dovecote and trees by the calm sea with dotted with little boats. The composition is erroneously annotated in pen and dark brown ink at lower right: "E. Duperac." The verso is annotated at upper left in pen and brown ink script: "crozat."

This apparently topographically correct drawing was a page from a dismembered sketchbook; numerous loose such drawings on blue paper by the artist are known. This artist is virtually a discovery by late-twentieth-century art historians. He is now correctly identified as Gherardo Cibo, but was for a brief two decades since the late 1970s mistakenly called "Messer Ulisse Severino da Cingoli," when he was being restudied, and when an important corpus of drawings was associated with him by the Dutch scholar Jaap Bolten.

As one now knows, although born in Genoa, the artist was of a noble family from the Marches. He probably never worked in Rome or Florence, but was one of the most learned amateur artist-botanists of the early Baroque period. His delightfully precise drawings are of particular relevance to the history of Naturalist illustration in the early modern period. While the Museum owns one drawing attributed to Gherardo Cibo (alias "Messer Ulisse Severino da Cingoli," no. 80.3.385), the present example is more meticulously drawn on blue paper, and is more characteristic of his hand. Numerous related pages of this sketchbook may be counted (including Leiden Prentenkabinett inv. nos. AW 441; AW 953; National Gallery, Prague; formerly in collection of Federico Zeri, Rome; Pierpont Morgan Library inv. 1962.13; three sheets formerly in Muensterberger collection, New York; formerly in collection of Hans Schaeffer, New York).
(C.C.B.)