Figures by a track in a rocky landscape near the coast

This lively landscape is a characteristic drawing by Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, known as il Bolognese. Grimaldi trained in Bologna in the circle of the Carracci family and later moved to Rome. He was a prolific painter and draftsman and his pen and ink landscape drawings are strongly connected with the style of the Carracci. This sheet was in Johnathan Richardson’s famous collection of drawings and bears on the back of the mount Richardson’s distinctive shelf mark.