King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

The back of the work provides us with important information about the provenance of the drawing. At the bottom are the words ”Collection de Solimene” written by the Danish art collector Johan Conrad Spengler (1767-1839) after he acquired the work at some point after 1820. On the back there are sketches of figures and architectural details with a fish and seal at the top. These animals are different in style to the other drawings, and made using a different technique by an artist other than Solimena, presumably someone from his atelier. At the bottom right the price is given as ”g’ 45”, i.e. 45 grana, the coinage of Naples. This tells us that the drawing was sold in the city, probably in the 1790s. The dark spots along the left and right edges are the droppings of bedbugs from a bedbug epidemic in Naples from 1720-30, indicating that the drawing was in the city during that time.