BAROQUE SURREALISM - ITALIAN THEATRE DESIGNSVolume of designs drawn by a set designer in the early eighteenth century, seemingly in Venice or Northern Italy, containing an assemblage of fanciful cityscapes and other scenes, generally executed in pen-and-ink, some finished with bodycolour or coloured wash, some forty drawings in all, generally in good fresh condition, bound randomly (some upside-down) evidently at a later date, size of the larger drawings (the majority) c.300 x 200mm., eighteenth-century white vellum boards, folio, [?Venice, eighteenth century]Footnotes:A STRIKING SERIES OF PROTO-SURREAL SET DESIGNS, most depicting colonnaded cityscapes set with random figures reminiscent of the 'metafisica' landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico painted over two hundred years later – although it might be thought all the more authentic, in its reflection of the unconscious and dream-state, for being the result of naïve spontaneity rather than artifice. Much of the 'staffage' with which the artist's dreamworld is populated – the riderless horse, the bishop being harangued by a woman within a library, grotesque masks, owls, barking dogs, the child being fished from the town canal, and so forth – derive from religious imagery current in painting and prints of the age.Some drawings suggest that the artist was also aware of the work of earlier Venetian and international artists. The colonnades in some of the cityscapes immediately bring to mind the architectural backdrops in work of the Venetian painter Carlo Crivelli (c. 1435-1495), as seen in The Annunciation today at the National Gallery, London. While in the black and white drawings with geometric diagrams we find elements that echo the work of the Dutch architect and painter Hans Vredman De Vries (1527-1609). Accompanying the drawings are two pages of notes, one of geometric calculations and another being, it appears, a transcript of a notorial deed concerning a property, headed 'Adi Xbre 1479: Venezia'; the property in question seeming to belong to a 'Girolamo Mataffor' and comprising the rental of a property in the ward of San Pietro di Castello, Venice. 1479 was an important date for the city of Venice, as it is the year which saw the end of the war with the Ottoman Empire - Turkey conquers Morea and Albania, while Venice has to settle with Cyprus. In many of the present drawings this contamination between the Venetian and Ottoman worlds is evident, as for example in the presence of the minarets in place of bell-towers.A further Northern Italian link is suggested by the paper. This bears the well-known Venetian watermark of three graduated crescents, known as the tre lune (similar to Heawood 867); with, as counter-marks, a trefoil between the initials M and P, and an anchor within a circle with a trefoil. The watermark HNB is also typical of the Venetian area, and the H might stand for 'Heredi' (heirs of) NB. A Northern Italian origin is also suggested by the red-and-white pennant flown by the ships in the only seascape within the volume, which appears to be that of Austrian Trieste. (De Chirico also, perhaps not uncoincidentally, had strong Northern Italian links). An eighteenth-century date is suggested by the use of angular perspective (which starts to be introduced in the 1700s, as opposed to the more central perspective still in use in the seventeenth-century), the watermarks, as well as by the handwriting of the documents, the costumes worn by some of the figures, and the style of the drawings; although this, like the question of locality and the artist's identity, remain open to further research.The drawings are as follows: (i) Tomb set within an urban garden, with mourning figure standing by and dog prancing into view beneath a hatched sky, coloured;(ii) Colonnade with heavily rusticated pillars;(iii) Unfinished perspective of a cell within a building;(iv) Unfinished perspective of a colonnade;(v) Two storey building, set with a table and two chairs;(vi) Unfinished study of columns;(vii) Unfinished perspective of a colonnade with patterned tile floor;(viii) Unfinished perspective sketches;(ix) Obelisk with hieroglyphs set within a colonnade, with hilly landscape and town beyond, a traveller with stave and his female companion and child resting by the obelisk (possibly drawn from the Flight into Egypt);(x) Unfinished perspective sketches, with calculations in pencil;(xi) Figure studies, including a grotesque mask on top of a column, fighting and sleeping dogs, and an owl;(xii) Palace beneath a turbulent sky, with a dog in the foreground barking at an owl perched on a post, coloured;(xiii) Side of a porticoed loggia, with a castle and mountains in the background, to the fore a standing woman and rider on the ground fallen from his horse (taken from the Conversion of St Paul);(xiv) Studies of a herdsman reclining and two oxen, one coloured;(xv) Side of a porticoed loggia, with further pillars, a potted plant and tree, in the foreground a standing peasant woman holding a sieve, goat and riderless horse in harness, coloured;(xvi) Loggia with arched building housing a statue beyond, unpopulated, coloured (with transcript of a rental agreement headed 'Adi Xbre 1479: Venezia' on verso);(xvii) Mother and child seated in an arched entryway, alongside two niches displaying statues of scantily-clad archer and king, with stairs leading to an altar in the background, coloured (taken from the Madonna and Child);(xviii) Side view of pillars surmounted by statues, with a fountain and church in the background, beneath a turbulent sky, coloured;(xix) Bishop seated within an arched library, a putto seated upon a book holding his mitre, a Sybil gesticulating alongside him, with bifurcated passages in the background, coloured;(xx) Empty colonnaded building, with gardener at the side, and turbulent sky above, coloured;(xxi) Archway with a galleon and port in the background, standing within the arch a maid with breasts exposed, alongside her a naked child holding a ring to a large hound, another dog behind them, coloured;(xxii) Unfinished sketch of a colonnade;(xxiii) Townscape with a Venetian-looking column in the background, beneath a turbulent sky rendered in a technique resembling embroidery, coloured;(xxiv) Two loggias seen from the side, with a tree in the background, beneath a sky rendered in a technique resembling embroidery, coloured;(xxv) Courtyard with a fountain at the centre, with statues (or people walking) above a screen in the background, with part of the sky rendered, coloured;(xxvi) Woman, flying putto and Mars at his anvil within an arched interior, coloured;(xxvii) Arched loggia with tower in the centre background, coloured;(xxviii) Classical townscape with a canal and bridge at the centre, ducks floating upon the water, with sky rendered above, coloured;(xxix) Classical townscape with a canal and bridge at the centre, ducks floating upon the water, a fisherman pulling what looks like a child out of the water, sky rendered above, coloured;(xxx) Twin archways surmounted by an AM/MA monogram, loggias to either side, sky rendered above, coloured;(xxxi) Lion in a rocky landscape (but without St Jerome), coloured;(xxxii) Unfinished perspective of an arched building seen from the side, coloured;(xxxiii) Sheet of geometric calculations with the ground plan of a pentagon star fort on the verso;(xxxiv) Unfinished pencil sketch of a loggia and tree;(xxxv) Hilly landscape with tree and chapel, drawn as if embroidered, coloured; (xxxvi) Ground plan of a pentagon star fort, coloured;(xxxvii) Side view of a colonnaded building, with trees and further buildings in background, coloured;(xxxviii) Tree, with buildings and mountains in the background, drawn as if embroidered, coloured;(xxxix) Seascape, with vessels labouring in a stiff wind, flying the red-and-white Austrian pennant (possibly denoting vessels from Trieste), a rowing boat in the right foreground, coloured;(xl) Porticoed cityscape, with a mother (a child in her backpack) and boy alongside her, pen-and-ink only;(xli) Unfinished study of a farm building, the head of a pig protruding at the edge;(xlii) Half-clothed figure seated in a rocky landscape, with a bay and city in the background, coloured.Saleroom notices:Please note this lot is not exempt from VAT on the buyer's premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com