Neal Auction 2012

14 33. Attributed to Charles-Louis Clérisseau (French, worked in Italy, 1721-1820) , “A Chimneypiece in the Neo- Classical Style”, c. 1770s/1780s, ink and two tones of gray wash, on cream-colored laid paper (perhaps with an even paler uniform gray wash), unsigned; watermark(s) partially obscured by repair tapes applied to verso, but with letters “...M A...” and “O...M” visible; inscribed on bottom margin with scale representing 6 “Palmi di Genova” (in which 1 Genoese oncia [inch] = 2 Genoese palmi; 1 palmo = 248 mm.); above it in the mouth of the fireplace another scale in different units. $1500/2500 Provenance: Roman art market, mid-20th century; James R. Lamantia Jr., New Orleans and New York. Note: This extremely beautiful and historically important drawing is a precocious and diagnostic precursor of the Neo-Classical movement. Its principal frieze (in fictive bas-relief) represents Apollo and Minerva at the center, with the flanking figures of the Nine Muses carrying their identifying attributes; Juno and Jupiter confront each other in the upper right-hand square panel, and two other divinities occupy the left; Mercury and a sister goddess crown the tall reliefs to the sides. This design is strikingly notable for its purity, simplicity, and sobriety: it displays no other ornaments at all, apart from the chaste moldings of a large egg-and-dart and a small bead-and-reel around the mouth of the fireplace, a simple beading around the side panels, a brief leaf-and-tongue under the square elements, and a foliated ovolo and smaller cove (separated by another small bead, and by a blank frieze) in the crowning entablature of the mantel shelf. Such conspicuous restraint, coupled with such paramount reliance on delicately detailed sculptural forms alone, mark this design as a truly startling contrast, for example, with the Rococo exuberance and Classical complexity of the most celebrated engravings of chimneypieces to be engraved in the preceding decade, the Camini of G. B. Piranesi (1720-1778)—issued as 70 etched plates in 1769. Clérisseau, a Parisian, won the Prix de Rome in 1749, and stayed in the Eternal City for almost twenty years, returning to Paris only in 1767 to become a member of the Académie Royale. While in Italy he became a close friend of Piranesi’s; he was also tutor to a variety of Northern architects, most importantly to Robert (1728-1792) and James Adam (1734-1794), on whose famous—even epochal—style Clérisseau had a fundamental and all-pervasive influence (as witnessed profoundly in this drawing). Clérisseau himself is best known in the United States as the co-designer with Thomas Jefferson of the Virginia State Capitol at Richmond (1785-99), based on the “Maison Carrée” at Nîmes. Clérisseau had become the preeminent authority on such Provençal structures with his Antiquités de la France: Monumens de Nismes (1778); and his long experience of southern France provides a plausible reason whereby his drawings (some 1100 of which are concentrated in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg) might have included this sheet, measured as it is in Genoese units. Genoa only officially adopted the metric system as of 1 March 1847, so this drawing’s citation of Genoese palmi is at once appropriate, and unhelpful with regard to dating (for which its watermark is also inconclusive). What can be said is that it very perfectly epitomizes the dawn of Neo-Classicism in Europe, and as such it is an artifact of the highest importance. References: Thomas J. McCormick, “Clérisseau,” Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., London, 1996, 34 vols., vol. 7, pp. 415-417; Dora Wiebenson and Claire Baines, The Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection: vol. I, French Books, Washington and New York, 1993, 118-121, nos. 52-53; Angelo Martini, Manuale di Metrologia, Rome, 1976, s.v. “Genova,” pp. 222-226 (for the measures). 33