Provenance:

Unidentified collector’s mark, lower right, possibly Sir Joshua Reynolds (Lugt 2364).
With Studio Lapeyre, Milan, Italy, 1992.
With Richard A. Berman, 2005, as Francesco Salviati; where acquired by:
Private Collection, New York, 2005–2026.

Literature:

Lester Carissimi and Christian Lapeyre, Francesco Salviati: Il Mondo alla Rovescia, exh. cat., Studio Lapeyre, Milan, 10 – 22 December 1992, pp. 42-43, cat. no. 18.

This engaging drawing was made in the mid-16th century by Prospero Fontana, one of the major exponents of Bolognese Mannerism. The drawing belongs to a series called “Il Mondo alla Rovescia” (The World Inside Out), which was probably conceived as book illustrations. The drawing is one of only a few known examples that shows the “Mundus Inverses” or the inverted world, where animals and humans have traded roles. In this work, pigs are leading farmers to feed on the hay in a barn while a wolf peers in through a window at left.

Born in Bologna in 1512, Prospero Fontana's early training began in the workshop Innocenzo da Imola. Although his first signed painting was executed in 1545, Fontana’s earliest known artistic activity was in Genoa in the late 1520s as an assistant to Perino del Vaga at the Palazzo Doria. Staying with Perino for about six years, Fontana left Genoa in 1534 and returned to Bologna. The 1540s saw Fontana begin to receive important commissions from the religious and literary elites of Bolognese society. Fontana also spent a period in Rome working again with Perino del Vaga—this time in the Castel San Angelo—and in Rimini working with Vasari on multiple altarpieces.

We are grateful to Nicolas Schwed for proposing the attribution of this drawing and all the related works from the series to Prospero Fontana.