Kustlandschap met figuren in klassieke kleding

237 A group of men in classical costume before a town on the seashore
Verso: Sketches for the decoration of a coffered ceiling

Inv. no. K V 050
Pen and brown ink, some black chalk (offset?), on tan paper.
Remains of framing lines in pen and brown ink. Irregularly
torn and made up along the bottom edge. Stained along top.
Verso: Black chalk.
209 x 296 mm
Provenance: Odescalchi; acquired for the Museum in 1790 (not
stamped with L. 2392)
Literature: Ariuli 2002, p. 252.

Chiarini wrote “Grimaldi? o copia” on the mount, but the sheet
was accepted by Ariuli (2002) and is undoubtedly autograph.
It is not clear whether the frieze of figures in the foreground
forms an integrated image with the landscape behind, nor is the
meaning of this scene understood. The men at left appear to be
taking objects – a dish, a ring? – from a chest to show them to
the draped figure moving towards them in the centre of the image.
The raised arm of the third figure from the right was drawn
over the landscape above and behind him; on the other hand,
the seated man at far right was drawn before the hatching indicating
the terrain was added. There is some similarity to a group
of figures that occurred, in reverse, in a panel in Grimaldi’s lost
ceiling of the Chambre de l’Audience in the Palais Mazarin in
Paris as recorded in a nineteenth-century copy by Jules Frappaz,
but the significance of that group likewise remains enigmatic.1
Faint sketches on the verso show designs for framed ceiling
coffers.

1 Exh. cat. Peupler les cieux, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2014, pp. 284-285, no. 87.