Harvard Art Museums > 2009.74: The Procession of Saint Rosalia in Palermo Drawings Collections Search Exit Deep Zoom Mode Zoom Out Zoom In Reset Zoom Full Screen Add to Collection Order Image Copy Link Copy Citation Citation"The Procession of Saint Rosalia in Palermo (Louis-Jean Desprez) , 2009.74,” Harvard Art Museums collections online, Dec 22, 2024, https://hvrd.art/o/332230. Reuse via IIIF Toggle Deep Zoom Mode Download This object does not yet have a description. Identification and Creation Object Number 2009.74 People Louis-Jean Desprez, French (Auxerre 1743 - 1804 Stockholm) Title The Procession of Saint Rosalia in Palermo Other Titles Alternate Title: The Procession of Saint Rosalie in Palermo, July 10, 1778 Classification Drawings Work Type drawing Date 1778 Culture French Persistent Link https://hvrd.art/o/332230 Physical Descriptions Medium Watercolor, black ink, and graphite on off-white antique laid paper, laid down on wove paper, laid down on a matboard, framing line in black ink Dimensions 20.9 x 34 cm (8 1/4 x 13 3/8 in.) Inscriptions and Marks inscription: mount, verso, brown ink: Procession de Ste. Rosalie a Palerme / Des Prez Provenance Recorded Ownership History Sale, Christie’s, London, 20 March 1973, lot 137; Julius Böhler, Munich; private collection, Austria; sale, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, 22 November 2008, lot 1430; Didier Aaron et Cie, Paris, sold; to Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Marian H. Phinney Fund, Paul J. Sachs Memorial Fund, through the generosity of Virgilia Klein, Bunge North America Corporation, and David M. Leventhal, and the Drawing Department Acquisition Fund, inv. no. 2009.74 Acquisition and Rights Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Marian H. Phinney Fund, Paul J. Sachs Memorial Fund, through the generosity of Virgilia Klein, Bunge North America Corporation, and David M. Leventhal, and the Drawing Department Acquisition Fund Accession Year 2009 Object Number 2009.74 Division European and American Art Contact am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu Permissions The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request. Descriptions Commentary Best known for the spectacular theater and opera sets he designed in the 1780s and 1790s for the Swedish court, the painter and draftsman Louis-Jean Desprez established his career with drawings and watercolors produced for Abbé Richard de Saint-Non's "Voyages pittoresque: ou, Description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicilie" (Paris, 1781-86). A landmark in eighteenth-century book arts, the five-volume publication gave its name to the genre of often lavishly illustrated travelogues that appeared in its wake in Europe and Britain. Although rich in cultural traditions and artifacts, in the mid-eighteenth century Naples and Sicily remained off the route of most grand tourists. From 1759 to 1761, Saint-Non traveled in southern Italy with Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Hubert Robert, and it was on the basis of their drawings that he initially undertook to produce an illustrated account of the treasures of the region. In 1777, he commissioned additional drawings, most of them executed by Desprez and Claude-Louis Chatelet. Desprez traveled to Sicily in May 1778 with Dominique Vivant-Denon--the future museum director, then a secretary in the French diplomatic service in Naples--whom Saint-Non commissioned to produce a text. They arrived in Palermo in time for the annual celebration of the feast of St. Rosalia in July--the event recorded in this watercolor. It depicts the large, ornate cars (floats) that constituted the centerpiece of the procession, surrounded by dozens of attendants and spectators, before the twelfth-century cathedral. Smoke from celebratory cannon-fire hangs over the crowd. The work displays Desprez's virtuosity at its best: the architecture and innumerable small figures rendered in minute detail, the smoke and clouds in a looser technique, and the teeming festivity recorded with a scenographic flair that predicts the artist's achievement as a designer of stage spectacles. In the event, this view of the procession of St. Rosalia was not engraved for reproduction in the "Voyage pittoresque." Like many other Desprez watercolors of Naples and Sicily, this painstakingly wrought, pictorially finished composition was clearly intended as an independent work of art. A squared, ink-and-wash drawing of the cathedral and the empty piazza (Sweden, private collection) evidently served as a preparatory study for our watercolor. Publication History Petra Lamers, Il viaggio nel Sud dell'Abbé de Saint-Non: Il "Voyage pittoresque à Naples et en Sicile:" La genesi, i disegni preparatori, le incisioni, Electa Napoli (Naples, 1992), cat. no. 259c, pp. 260-62 Erik Henry Neil, Tomaso Maria Napoli 1659-1725: Un architetto Domenicano e il suo mondo, Flaccovio Editore (Palermo, 2012), pp. 60-61 Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Francesco Buccella, Sonia Couturier, Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, Melissa Hyde, Suzanne Folds McCullagh, Isabelle Mayer-Michalon, and Xavier Salmon, Tradition & Transitions: Eighteenth-Century French Art from The Horvitz Collection, exh. cat., ed. Alvin L. Clark, Jr., The Horvitz Collection (2017), pp. 284, 529-n.8 Alvin L. Clark, Jr. and Edouard Kopp, French Drawings from the Age of Claude, Poussin, Watteau, and Fragonard: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2022), cat. no. 101, repr.; detail repr. p. 271 Exhibition History Recent Acquisitions, Part II: Building the Collection, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/19/2012 - 09/29/2012 Verification Level This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
