Two exhibitions in Parisian galleries

26/3/26 - Art market - Paris - The route followed by connoisseurs during Drawing Week inevitably leads to the exhibition Nicolas Schwed is organising on Rue Saint-Honoré, with, as every year, a very fine selection of old and modern works on paper, among which several eighteenth-century French works stand out. Somewhat unexpected in the gallery of this specialist in Italian art, who has nevertheless always known how to remain highly eclectic and is preparing for this summer a much-awaited exhibition on this very subject in Amiens [1], these appear after several major transalpine drawings, among which we should note this preparatory study for a Roman fresco (ill. 1) by Federico Zuccaro, for which the Louvre preserves two overall drawings. It is quite fascinating to follow, as the catalogue entry explains, the development of the composition through the various known studies, but the “nervous” quality of the sheet offered by Nicolas Schwed makes it as powerful as it is appealing. Another captivating religious drawing, this Trinity by Cornelis Schut (ill. 2) takes us this time north of the Alps, since it was for the Church of the Assumption in Cologne that the Antwerp painter devised this composition in preparation for a painting — destroyed in the terrible bombings of the Second World War — which was placed, together with a Virgin in Glory and a Resurrection, in the altarpiece surmounting the high altar. A sketch for the Resurrection has survived in the city’s Wallraf-Richartz Museum, but the other two paintings were hitherto known only through their engraving by Rombout Eynhoudts, as well as a variant of this Trinity published by the RKD.