The Rape of Persephone

Executed towards the end of the 1590s with Procaccini’s descriptive and characteristic red-chalk technique, the present sheet originally belonged to the late Philip Pouncey (1910-1990), the great connoisseur and scholar of Italian drawings, who recognized it as a work by the artist at a 1959 Christie’s auction in London. Developed into a highly finished drawing and seemingly never translated into a painting, the same subject was further investigated by the artist in a second sheet in red chalk now in the Courtauld Gallery, London (inv. D.1952.RW.3777).