Un disegno da Scipione Pulzone e una tela spagnola di Giovanni Battista Ricci da Novara

The article proposes a parallel be- tween two artistic personalities usually considered by critics to be at odds with each other in their way of painting and their respective media of choice: one almost exclusively painting frescoes, the other on easel: Giovanni Battista Ricci, from No- vara, and Scipione Pulzone, from Gaeta. The occasion originated from the discov- ery of an unpublished drawing by the for- mer, based on a model of one of the two Ascents to Calvary that Scipione painted for Marcantonio II Colonna and Ferdinan- do de’ Medici, demonstrating Ricci’s inter- est in Pulzone’s pictorial production that had never been considered before. The analysis of the drawing has also made it possible to confirm its autography, study its technique and formulate a hypothesis on its function. In an attempt to trace the origin of the drawing, the collecting history of both paintings was briefly retraced. The fortune received by the Colonna exemplar once it arrived in Spain as a gift was an op- portunity to consider a painting by Ricci that arrived in Spanish territory in similar circumstances to that of Pulzone. The canvas is the Glory of All Saints, docu- mented in Valencia in 1602, donated by Camillo Borghese to Patriarch Juan de Ribera and still kept in the Colegio of the Corpus Christi’s Museum. It is one of the rare and little-known movable works made by Ricci, which would significantly anticipate his relationship with the future Pope Paul V Borghese.