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| Andrea Sacchi Tobias parting from his family 17th century drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Two ancient heads 17th century drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
Andrea Sacchi (1599-1661) – the most prominent painter in mid-seventeenth-century Rome – gained numerous lucrative official commissions which he executed with help from a small army of assistants and apprentices. The drawings immediately below were conceived by Sacchi for a mural in the baptistry of the ancient church of S. Giovanni Laterano. Its edifying subject was The Destruction of Pagan Idols. Sacchi himself made the drawings, but his pupil Carlo Maratti (or Maratta) made the actual fresco.
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for fresco in the Lateran Baptistry, Rome ca. 1645 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for fresco in the Lateran Baptistry, Rome ca. 1645 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for fresco in the Lateran Baptistry, Rome ca, 1645 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for fresco in the Lateran Baptistry, Rome ca. 1645 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
An even richer collection of Sacchi drawings survives from a project to decorate the vault of S. Luigi dei Francesi, the French church in Rome. Cardinal Francesco Barberini commissioned this fresco in gratitude for the protection he had received from Cardinal Mazarin in France during his own forced exile from Rome. Sacchi intended to evoke the Carracci vault-frescoes at Palazzo Farnese with their ornamental ignudo figures derived from Michelangelo. As things fell out, Sacchi died shortly after he began to paint. The work was never completed, and all trace of it was soon obliterated.
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for vault fresco of S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome ca. 1653-60 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for vault fresco of S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome ca. 1653-60 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for vault fresco of S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome ca. 1653-60 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for vault fresco of S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome ca. 1653-60 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for vault fresco of S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome ca. 1653-60 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for vault fresco of S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome ca. 1653-60 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Study for St Andrew adoring his Cross ca. 1632-50 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Andrea Sacchi Figure dancing and playing cymbals 1630s drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
In 1960 the great Sir Anthony Blunt published a catalogue of the Roman Drawings at Windsor dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. He noted that, "they seem with very few exceptions to have come from the collection of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Albani, which was bought for the King by James Adam in 1762. The Cardinal had inherited this collection from his uncle, Clement XI, at the death of the latter in 1721. The core of it was formed by the drawings bought by the Pope from Maratta in 1703, which included the Domenichinos, probably the Andrea Sacchis and, one may imagine, a large part of the seventeenth-century drawings by Roman artists. ... The drawings by Sacchi, more than 130 in number, form one of the two most important groups of the kind in existence (the other being at Düsseldorf) and show the artist's talent – one could not say genius – to the best advantage."