Head of a sphinx in profile

Arguably the most important architectural project in seventeenth-century Antwerp was the Jesuit church initially dedicated to Ignatius Loyola, and later to Saint Charles Borromeo. Built between 1615 and 1621 by the architects Pieter Huyssens and François d’Aguilon, it boasts decoration in part designed by Peter Paul Rubens, Antwerp’s foremost painter and a champion of the Catholic Church (Fabri and Lombaerde, op. cit.). Rubens produced in the first place numerous paintings, including two major altarpieces, both now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Gemäldegalerie, inv. 517, 519; see H. Vlieghe, Saints II, Brussels 1973 (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VIII), nos. 104, 115, figs. 6, 40). However, he also contributed to the decoration of the architecture and sculptural elements with several drawings, of which three for the façade are generally accepted as autograph (Morgan Library and Museum, New York inv. I,233, 1957.1; and British Museum, London, inv. Oo,9.28; see Logan and Belkin, op. cit., I, nos. 396-398, II, figs. 516-518).

The present drawing, of impressive dimensions and great eloquence, was made as a design for the sphinxes decorating the volutes at the top of the façade of the church, on either side of the pediment. It has been suggested that the drawing is the result of three different stages by different hands (Fabri and Lombaerde, op. cit., p. 164), but it remains open to debate whether this is the case. The traditional suggestion that it is a drawing by or attributable to Annibale Carracci (the attribution it carried in the collection of Padre Resta, as recorded in the manuscript catalogue of his collection; see Wood, op. cit.), retouched by Rubens, should probably be dismissed; it is difficult to imagine the sheet being anything else than a drawing expressly made as a design for the sculptures, either by a workshop assistant of Rubens, or by an assistant whose work was later retouched by the master (the latter view is taken in Fabri and Lombaerde, op. cit., p. 165). In any case, as a powerful design for an important element of the church’s façade, it is a significant work, illustrating Rubens’s workshop’s deep involvement in the shaping of one of Antwerp’s major religious monuments. The drawing’s prestige is further underscored by the existence of a full-scale period copy in red chalk, also included in this lot (ii).