SCHULE VON PARMA
16th C.

Title: Diana Prepares for the Hunt.
Verso: John the Baptist in the desert.
Technique: Black chalk on beige paper.
Mounting: Mounted on the left with self-adhesive strips.
Measurement: 17,5 x 14cm.
Notation: Inscribed on verso top left: "il Parmesano".
Frame: Mat.
Provenance:
Collection Erich Schleier, Berlin.

Erich Schleier (08.07.1934 - 07.12.2023) passed away last winter. He was one of the world's leading experts on Italian art from the 17th to 18th centuries.

I had the pleasure of getting to know Erich Schleier in the early 2000s: some unanswered questions about artists we were both studying had brought us closer together. From then on, a correspondence began that was enriched from time to time by joint exhibition visits in Italy or visits to his flat in Berlin-Dahlem. Erich Schleier became a kind of mentor to me, extremely generous with advice, able to recognise talent even in a young man like me, and very sincere. Rare qualities that I always remember with admiration and a certain nostalgia.

Erich Schleier was a great researcher of 17th century Italian painting: his interests focussed in particular on the fertile axis between the Po Valley, Rome and Naples, where some of the most important masterpieces of this period were created. After studying art history and archaeology at the universities of Hamburg, Freiburg and Munich, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on the painter Giovanni Lanfranco, to whom he devoted numerous other studies. From 1971 to 1999, he was curator and head curator for Italian painting at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, where he worked tirelessly with the protagonists and co-protagonists of the Italian Baroque, such as "his" Giovanni Lanfranco. They also included many other artists, such as Pietro da Cortona, Alessandro Turchi, Girolamo Troppa, Pier Francesco Mola, Luca Giordano and their entourage.
Erich Schleier put the collection of Italian art back on its feet several decades after the destruction of the Second World War and renewed, researched, restored and made it accessible to the public again.

Countless scientific articles, books, conferences and exhibitions adorn the illustrious career of Erich Schleier. His contribution to art history is extremely significant when one considers how many forgotten artists and their works were rediscovered through the work of Erich Schleier. In the case of many artists, he has helped to significantly expand the catalogue and thus create the basis for later monographic findings.

For decades, Erich Schleier was the greatest expert on 17th century painting in Rome. His knowledge in this field was so comprehensive that his opinion was fundamental for the art world. In Italy, Erich Schleier became a kind of academic legend, and was awarded a further honorary doctorate from the University of Naples in 2000. In this catalogue, we present the most interesting works, paintings and drawings from the Erich Schleier collection in terms of art history.

Erich Schleier's collection, built up early on since the 1960s, reflects his academic interests and his private tastes: Italian painting and graphic art from the 17th century, with a few forays into the 18th and 19th centuries. Among the artists who accompanied Erich Schleier throughout his life was Giovanni Lanfranco, about whom he published extensively. One work by this artist could not be missing from his collection, namely the drawing with a finely observed study of male hands. It is a precise study of the hands of St Paul the Apostle, which was realised in a fresco on the side of the windows of the nave of the Certosa di San Martino in Naples in 1637.
Giacomo Cavedoni, Francesco Solimena and Girolamo Troppa are also represented with small paintings. Girolamo Troppa in particular was the painter to whom Erich Schleier dedicated his last works. The last writing by Erich Schleier was the excellent essay on the draughtsman Troppa in the monograph published by Francesco Petrucci at the end of 2021.