(Cremona 1671 - Bologna 1749)
PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNI GIROLAMO SBARAGLIA, WITHIN AN OVAL FLANKED BY TWO PUTTI ON CORNUCOPIAS, WITH A CARTOUCHE BELOW, 1716
Etching, De Vesme 361.3.ii. A fine impression of this very rare etching, printed in greenish gray ink, with margins. The inking is compatible with that of this specimen, preserved at the Metropolitan Museum.
Some moisture stains on the right side. To the platemark 242 x 172 mm.
Donato Creti entered Lorenzo Pasinelli's drawing academy in Bologna as a young boy, soon becaming the protégé of Count Alessandro Fava, whose palace was celebrated for its frescoes by the Carracci and Albani. Creti worked in Palazzo Fava for some time, drawing, painting and providing fresco decoration. In around 1700 he received a commission from the Counts of Novellara to decorate their family palace, and in 1708 he completed a large fresco (Alexander Cutting the Gordian Knot) in the Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande in Bologna. Apart from fresco decorations, the early part of his career was taken up with secular commissions for easel pictures. Throughout the 1730's and the 1740's, Creti Produced several important altarpieces for churches in Emilia-Romagna. In his biography of the artist, Giampietro Zanotti writes that Creti's drawings were highly regarded by his contemporaries; Marcantonio Franceschini, for one, praised the artist as grandissimo disegnatore.
