Vincenzo Leonardi (Italian, fl.1621-1646)
Seventeenth - Century Italian*
Citrus, Citrus sp.: anomalous fruiting branch
Watercolor and gouache, with blackened lead white highlights, over graphite
Annotated bottom center: 517
ca. 1630
Paper size: 19 x 13 in
Provenance: Cassiano dal Pozzo; Cardinal Alessandro Albani; King George III, by descent to George V; London Art Market(Mendelson); James R. Herbert Boone; Sotheby’s (New York), 16 September 1988, lot 153.
Literature: D. Freedberg & E. Baldini, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonne. Part One - CitusFruit (London, 1997), Plate 118.

Like the drawing in the preceding entry [Plate 117], this one shows a fruiting branch. It has narrow, lanceolate leaves with wingless petioles and bears six yellowish-orange fruits. These look teratological but the variety of their shapes globose, ovoid, prominently nippled, ribbed, furrowed) resist any attempt at taxonomic identification. This drawing was likewise not reproduced in Ferrari’s Hesperides.

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