A few works coming up for auction in France shortly

18/11/25 - Art Market - France - Besides the sales to which we have dedicated, or will dedicate, specific articles, and the works already mentioned earlier (see in particular this news item of 6/10/25), several important drawings and paintings will very soon come under the hammer. Here are a few of them, some of which, it is to be hoped, may end up in French museums.

Preparatory cartoons for frescoes are rare objects. They have often disappeared owing to their use, but also because of their size, which makes their preservation complex. The one to be sold tomorrow afternoon, 19 November, at Drouot, in the Millon sale of old master drawings, is not strictly speaking a cartoon, but a “cartonetto” — an intermediate stage before the cartoon itself, which thus made it easier to keep than the one that had been used for the execution of the final fresco. It is a head of a young man, preparatory to an apostle (ill. 1) at the centre of The Assumption of the Virgin at Trinità dei Monti in Rome (ill. 2). The work has been pricked with a needle, which allowed it to be transferred for the creation of the cartoon, which underwent the same treatment in order to transfer the work onto the wall.

Two other comparable “cartonetti” are…