The Entombment.

Drawing, pen and black ink with grey wash, 16,6 x 22,7 cm, laid paper with watermark, unsigned (some minor yellow stains, small repairs at left edge).

Under passe-partout.

Attributed by a 19th-c. hand on the passe-partout to Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) an Italian Baroque painter, mainly active in Naples, where he and his rival Jusepe de Ribera dominated the painting scene for several decades. As a papal knight, he is often referred to as Cavalliere Massimo Stanzione, especially in older sources. Stanzione, along with Bernardo Cavallino and most importantly Artemisia Gentileschi, represented a new and more graceful painting style. The drawing shows a resemblance to Stanzione's Pietà painting (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica) in its general triangular composition. Scholars agree in assigning the painting to the earlier phase of Stanzione's career, to somewhere between 1621 and 1626. Both in the drawing as in the finished painting Stanzione shows a desire to interpret the theme in a measured, classical sense.