Neptune in a chariot drawn by four hippocampi

Francesco Cozza was a painter and etcher from Calabria who, as a young man, moved to Rome and became a pupil of Domenichino. Very few of his drawings are known, another sheet by the artist is in the British Museum (inv. 1982,1002.2; N. Turner, Italian Drawings in the British Museum. Roman Baroque Drawings, London, 1999, I, no. 90). A figure of Neptune riding his chariot, very similar to the one in this large preparatory study, appears on the ceiling of the library in the Collegio Innocenziano in Piazza Navona, frescoed by Cozza in 1667-1673. That decoration, depicting the Apotheosis of the Pamphili family, is considered the artist’s masterpiece.