ST PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS
pencil, pen and ink and wash on paper
20.5 x 31cm; 8 x 12 1/4in
42.5 x 58cm; 16 3/4 x 22 3/4in (framed)

Property from a Private Collection, Kew

Provenance
The Manning Galleries Ltd, London
Edgar Seaton Hyde, Cheshire (acquired from the above in the 1960s)
Thence by descent

Ferri's source for the present work was very likely Raphael's tapestry of the same subject from his series of Acts of the Apostles commissioned by Pope Leo X in 1517 and displayed on their completion in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. An etching by Cornelis Bloemaert (1603-1692) derived from Ferri's composition was printed in 1678, copies of which are in the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Chief pupil and assistant of the painter and architect Pietro da Cortona (1596/7-1669) in Rome, Ferri completed the internal decorations at the Pitti Palace in Florence that Cortona had begun. Among his own work, one of the most impressive is the vast frescoes in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo. Another of his major paintings - St Ambrose healing an invalid - was the main altarpiece in the Church of Sant'Ambrosio della Massima, Rome.