An Exhibition of
at
Adam Williams Fine Art Ltd.
24 East 80th Street, New York, NY 10075
Telephone: (212) 249-4987
24th January - 5th February 2009
Daily 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Saturdays 11:00 am - 5:00 pm
Friday 23rd January 4 - 9 pm
Sunday 25th January 2 pm - 5 pm
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my daughter Novella, Alexandra Chaldecott and Joanna Watson for their dedication in researching and writing the catalogue.
I would also like to thank the following people for their help and advice in the preparation of this catalogue: Jean-François Baroni, Fiorella and Romano Binazzi, Donatella Biagi Maino, Christopher Brown, Alessandro Cecchi, Pauline David, Leopold Deliss, Rembrandt Duits, Maria Gordon-Smith, Mina Gregori, Heidi Hornik, Paul Johannides, Bryony Kirby, George Knox, Carlotta Mascherpa, Elizabeth McGrath, Jonathan Mennel, Maureen O’Brien, Stephen Ongpin, Bertrand Puvis de Chavannes, Cristiana Romalli, Gregory Rubinstein, Anna Ryman, Mary Newcome Schleier, Rick Scorza, David Scrase, Julien Stock, Paul Taylor, Alexandra Toscano, Anne Varick Lauder, Gabe Weisberg, Aidan Weston-Lewis.
Last but not least, I am very grateful to my wife Cristina, for her patience and support.
Jean-Luc Baroni
Drawings are sold mounted but not framed. Paintings are sold framed. Dimensions are given in millimetres and inches, with height before width. Prices on application.
All enquiries should be addressed to Jean-Luc or Novella Baroni at Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., 7-8 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, St. James’s, London, SW1Y 6BU Tel. +44 (20) 7930-5347 or Fax +44 (20) 7839-8151 or, only during the exhibition in New York (January 2009) at Tel. + (212) 249-4987 or Fax +1 (212) 755-0792.
e-mail: jlbaroni@jlbaroni.com or nbaroni@jlbaroni.com
© Copyright Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd., 2009
Designed by Jean-Luc Baroni/Romano Binazzi - Printed in Italy by Fiorepubblicità - Florence - Tel. +39 055 65 80 428
Brescia c. 1480 - c. 1548 Venice
Black and white chalk, on blue paper. Marked for squaring in black chalk on all four edges. 305 by 168 mm. (12 by 6 5/8 in.)
Whilst Savoldo is undoubtedly one of the major Masters of the High Renaissance, virtually nothing is known of his early training. Born in Brescia, probably around 1480, he is first recorded in Parma in 1506, and in Florence, where he entered the Guild in 1508, though no works survive to document his presence in either place. From 1514 until 1521, Savoldo divided his career between his native city and Venice, where he eventually settled for the remainder of his life. In 1520, he signed the Hermit Saints Anthony and Paul in the Accademia, Venice, and in 1521, he took over the commission for the altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Four Saints for the Church of San Niccolò, Treviso, from Marco Pensaben, a painter who had left the work unfinished. The artist’s work of the early 1520s, such as the four paintings of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, reflects the influence of Titian, as well as that of Venetian prints and Northern European artists. In these works, the figures appear particularly small against their surrounding landscapes and complex architecture. From the late 1520s, the artist specialised in single figure paintings which recall the work of Giorgione, such as the 1527 painting of the Shepherd with a Flute in the Getty Museum, Malibu. Between 1531 and 1535, Savoldo reached the peak of his career, working at the court of Duke Francesco II Sforza, where he produced a number of night scenes, such as the Saint Matthew in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the two canvases of the Nativity in collections in Milan and Rome. In pictures like the Saint Matthew, where the saint is surrounded by the dark, his figure illuminated by the light of a single candle, Savoldo creates those characteristic effects of chiaroscuro, which inspired later generations of artists, including Caravaggio. The artist’s late works are less bold, the figures are modulated, and the scenes are closer in style to Lombard painting than his earlier work. Among these are the Flute-Player in a Room, in the Pinacoteca Civica, Brescia, and the Saint Mary Magdalene, in the Pitti Palace, Florence. Savoldo is last recorded in a letter dated December 1548, in which Pietro Aretino writes to a former pupil of the artist, praising the beauty of Savoldo’s works and his artistic talent and knowledge1.
There are two paintings by Savoldo in which the figure of St. Peter appears in a similar pose. One is the altarpiece of The Madonna and Child in Glory, with Saints Peter, Bernard2, Zeno and Paul, in the Church of Santa Maria in Organo, Verona (fig.1)3. The other is a larger altarpiece of the The Madonna and Child in Glory, with Saints Peter, Dominic, Paul and Jerome, executed by Savoldo in 1524 for the Church of San Domenico in Pesaro, and now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan (fig.2)4. The former picture is dated 1533, and may have been
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2.G. G. Savoldo, The Madonna in Glory with Saints, Pinacotecadi Brera, Milan. |
3. G. G. Savoldo, Seated Pilgrim, Graphischen Sammlung Albertina,Vienna. |
commissioned by the Della Torre Family, whose coat-of-arms is visible at the lower right corner of the canvas5. The general disposition of the scene is similar in both pictures, but the poses of the figures are different. Furthermore, Saints Dominic and Jerome have been substituted with Saints Zeno (Bishop of Verona) and Bernard, and the Verona altarpiece lacks the two angels flanking the Madonna and Child in the Brera canvas. The figure of St.Peter is also different in the two canvases. For example, while the saint looks up towards the Madonna and Child in the Verona painting, he looks at the spectator in the Brera altarpiece; St.Peter has his left arm holding the book and hanging down in the Verona canvas, whereas it is folded and pressed against his chest in the Brera picture; the saint wears his yellow cloak over his shoulders in the Verona painting, whereas it is tied around his waist in the Brera altarpiece.
The figure of St. Peter in our sheet is significantly closer to that of the same figure in the Verona painting than to the St.Peter in the Brera altarpiece, which indicates that it was intended as a study for the St.Peter in the former canvas rather than for the latter. Notwithstanding their similarity, the figures of St.Peter in the drawing and in the Verona altarpiece still differ in numerous details. For example, the physiognomy of the two figures of St.Peter differ and the shape of the folds of the drapery are significantly different in the painting and in the drawing, where, for instance, the saint’s habit is longer at the back of the figure; in the drawing, all five fingers of the saint’s hand holding the book are exposed, whereas in the painting, the thumb is hidden behind the book; the same book has no buckles and is partly covered by St.Peter’s cloak in the drawing, and the saint’s right hand is not holding the keys which appear in the painting. Besides the present sheet, only two other figure studies by Savoldo have survived: a drawing of a Seated Pilgrim, in the Albertina, Vienna (fig.3) 6 and a sheet of Saint John the Evangelist, in the
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4. G. G. Savoldo, St. John the Evangelist, Nationalmuseum,Stockholm. |
5. G. G. Savoldo, G. G. Savoldo, The Transfiguration, Uffizi, Florence. |
National Museum, Stockholm (fig.4)7, which is a study for the same figure in the painting of the Transfiguration, of which two autograph versions are known: The first, executed at around the same date as the Verona Madonna and Child in Glory, is in the Ambrosiana, Milan8, and the second, painted a few years later, is in the Uffizi, Florence (fig.5) 9. All three sheets are similar in size, handling and technique, with carefully applied black and white chalk to model the rich folds of the dress, and robust black chalk hatching around the figures to highlight them on the sheet and thereby produce dramatic effects of chiaroscuro. The drawing of Saint John the Evangelist in Stockholm provides a particularly convincing comparison, as it shows the same kind of differences with the corresponding figure in the paintings of the Transfiguration to those observed between our sheet and the figure of St. Peter in the Verona altarpiece. For example, here too, the physiognomy of the figures of Saint John the Evangelist differ, and the drapery is formed differently in the drawing and in the paintings; similarly, the saint’s left hand is fully visible in the drawing, whereas it is partly covered by the drapery in both paintings.
A further drawing connected to the Madonna and Child in Glory in Verona, is a study for the Head of Saint Paul in the Getty Museum, Malibu10.
To this day, less than fifty paintings by Savoldo have come to light. The number of extant drawings by the Venetian master is even smaller, counting only sixteen, of which fourteen are studies of heads, and just two studies are of single figures. The recent discovery on the Paris art market11 of this beautifully preserved sheet brings the known quantity of drawings by Savoldo to seventeen and undoubtedly constitutes an important addition to the artist’s corpus of drawings.
Florence 1501 - 1547 Rome
Red chalk recto and verso. 152 by 82mm. (6 by 3 1/2 in.)
PROVENANCE: Max de Beer, de Beer Fine Art Ltd., from whom acquired by Philip Pouncey, 27 March 1963; thence by inheritance to his wife, Myril Pouncey; her estate sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 21 January 2003, lot 16.
Perino del Vaga can be considered as a virtuoso draughtsman and one of the great decorative designers of sixteenth century Italy. He exercised a powerful and widespread influence on the generation of artists who encountered him. Born in Florence, he studied with Ridolfo Ghirlandaio before being taken to Rome under the wing of an insignificant painter known as il Vaga – hence Perino’s name. Coming to the notice of Raphael, he was given work on the decoration of the Logge and quickly became absorbed into the circle of artists at the heart of the great flowering of fresco decoration for which Raphael was responsible. With the sack of Rome which took place in 1527, Perino fled the city and headed for Genoa, where he spent the next five years decorating the palace of the Doria family. Other projects followed both in Genoa and in Pisa and Perino only returned to Rome in around 1537. It took some months to re-establish his career in the Holy City but his fresco scheme for the Cappella Massimi in S. Trinita dei Monti greatly impressed Pope Paul III who kept Perino in his service until the artist’s rather early death. In this employment, like Giulio Romano, the other great designer of this period, Perino executed schemes and compositions for many different purposes, from the magnificent decorations in the Castel Sant’Angelo, which are the chief work of this late period, to exquisite studies for crystals, costume sketches for theatrical spectacles and designs for Papal vestments.
Afascinatingly lively and sensuous work, this study shows Perino in the act of defining a complicated and artful pose. Aside from the female figure’s elegantly turned head, everything seems to be in motion; arms change position, weight shifts, putti scramble. The small study on the verso appears as an effort to complete and pin down one of these mischievous creatures. The twisting pose of the figure is clearly derived from the classical prototype known as Venus Binding her Sandal1 which was interpreted later but very similarly by Giovanni da Bologna (in around 1570). There could also be an echo of the figure of Venus bathing in Giulio Romano’s fresco in the Sala di Psiche in the Palazzo Te, Mantua2, where Venus is depicted with Mars, standing naked, her head twisted, attended by putti.
Both the style and the subject argue for this being a late drawing perhaps relating to Perino’s designs for frescoes illustrating the Story of Psyche in the Papal Apartment of Castel Sant’Angelo. A somewhat similar figure, but without the putti, may be seen on the right side of the scene in which Psyche discovers Cupid and Cupid flees3. A sketch in the British Museum is usually identified as Psyche tormented by the servants of Venus4. The Pysche figure has the same dark eyes and voluptuous curves as in the present drawing and, though executed in pen and brown ink, shows Perino working in an identically spontaneous, and highly animated style. Similarly, the British Museum study relates only indirectly to the sala di Psiche frescoes but it too must be an exploratory working study dating from late in his career. Perino received his first payment for the decoration of the room dedicated to Psyche on 29 May 1546, only a year before his death. If the present drawing was not made with a narrative scene in mind, then it could perhaps be an idea preparatory for the kind of trompe l’oeil figure which Perino placed as rhythmic dividers in the Sala Paolina of the Castel San Angelo. There are rough lines drawn at the left and right edges possibly demarcating a niche and the construction of the curling, piled up figures has a balance and containment suited to a pseudo-sculptural composition.
Parma 1503 - 1540 Casalmaggiore
Pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white. The sheet made up at all four edges. 151 by 103 mm. (6 by 4 1/2 in.).
PROVENANCE: Probably the Earl of Arundel; probably A. M. Zanetti; Giovanni Antonio Armano (according to the engraved inscription on the related etching by Rosaspina).
LITERATURE: A.E. Popham, Catalogue of the Drawings of Parmigianino, New Haven and London 1971, under cats. O.R.93 and 521, see pl.202; Suzanne Folds McCullagh and Laura M. Giles, Italian Drawings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 1997, under cat.217.
Until last year, the existence of this drawing was known to scholars only from an etching by Francesco Rosaspina (circa 1762-184) (fig.1). The etching formed part of a large volume of engravings bought in 1919 by the British Museum, nearly all of which appeared to be facsimiles of drawings by Parmigianino1. Eight of the group, including the one discussed here, bear legends in Italian stating that they reproduce drawings by Parmigianino belonging to Signor Giovanni Antonio Armano (a late 18th century Venetian dealer): “F.M. Inv. F.R inc.. Dal Gabinetto del Sig. Antonio Armano”2. A.E. Popham published the Rosaspina print – which is in reverse to the present drawing and shows very slightly more of the male figure at the drawing’s right edge – asserting that it “certainly reproduces a genuine drawing, probably dating from the Roman period”. He added the suggestion that this work, along with a drawing in Budapest of a larger group of figures, and a second facsimile (fig.2) of a missing drawing (which has since also been found and is now in the Art Institute of Chicago (fig.3), might all be connected to the Marriage of the Virgin, a composition drawing in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris3.
In style as well as subject, this elegant and atmospheric drawing can also be linked to a somewhat larger group of pen and wash studies all executed in the same looping, calligraphic style combined with pools of wash and depicting figures gathered in
1. Rosaspina’s reproduction, Etching and Aquatint, 16.4 x 11.4 cm., bears the legend “F.M. Inv. F R inc. Dal Gabinetto del Sig. Antonio Armano”, British Museum. |
temple interiors. The group includes a drawing of the Pool of Bethseda in a private collection,4 a study for Christ Healing the Sick in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Angers5 and a composition known as the Worship of Jupiter in the British Museum6. Generally dated to Parmigianino’s Roman period, these studies are considered to have been inspired by Raphael’s Vatican frescoes, particularly the School of Athens, as well as the designs of the Sistine Chapel tapestries. As David Ekserdjian says: “What these compositional drawings demonstrate above all is Parmigianino’s profound imaginative engagement with what he saw”7. It is worth noting here that one figure in the present drawing, the woman holding a baby, clearly echoes a figure in Raphael’s tapestry design Saints Peter and John the Evangelist Healing the Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, a composition which Parmigianino appears to have copied in the form of an etching.8 The purpose of many of these drawings is unknown. Some, such as the Angers Christ Healing the Sick cited above, may have been preparatory for the neverexecuted commission received from Clement VII to
2. After Parmigianino, Lithograph, Denon’s Monuments, 161 b.
fresco the walls of the Sala dei Pontefici in the Vatican; their grand, horizontal format suggesting a series of large scale narrative paintings. However there may also be connections to the engravings which the artist experimented with during and possibly after his Roman period. Like Perino del Vaga and Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino collaborated with printmakers, primarily Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio and Ugo da Carpi. He also made a small number of etchings himself.
Groups of elegant, elongated, standing figures, loosely draped and often with elaborate hats and piled up hair, appear in a number of these works: the upright Marriage of the Virgin, an engraving by Jacopo Caraglio after Parmigianino, the drawing in the Louvre preparatory for a second engraving by Caraglio of the Martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul (interestingly like the present study and a number of other works of this period, the Louvre drawing has a significant use of white heightening) and the beautiful etching possibly by Parmigianino himself of The Adoration of the Shepherds, the composition known also from a black chalk drawing in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle9. Certainly, the play of light in the present work, made more striking by the use of white heightening, is very much in keeping with the strong contrasts of the Adoration of the Shepherds, which was presumably imagined as a nocturnal scene. Recalling Popham’s original idea that the present drawing might relate to the Ecole des Beaux Arts Marriage of the Virgin, it is
3. Parmigianino, Nine Standing figures, pen and brown ink and wash, 124 x 131 mm, The Art Institute of Chicago.
interesting to note David Franklin’s suggestion in the cataloguing for a further study connected to that composition (in the British Museum), that Parmigianino intended to set this scene too in “a dark, nocturnal atmosphere”10.
The comparison with the drawing at Chicago, which Popham had considered a companion to the present work is illuminating; it too passed through a succession of important collections, was known from engravings (by at least four different hands in the case of the Chicago study) and is illustrative of a fascinating and still somewhat mysterious moment in Parmigianino’s career when he was most recognisably influenced by the order and grace of Raphael’s compositions. Most likely the present drawing was indeed conceived of as part of a larger scene. The middle figure holding the baby gestures forward, pointing with one hand while turning her head to look behind, perhaps to encourage others, and thereby suggesting a longer line of spectators. The young boy may be turning to his mother for protection and it is assumed that something is happening beyond him to the left. What the flatness of Rosaspina’s etching cannot convey is the remarkably strong atmosphere of the drawing and the likelihood, implied by the swathes of wash in the background (which are not rendered in the print), that rather than being an interior scene, this study depicts figures approaching a building from the outside and that it is a light shining from an interior which bathes their forms and faces in such a striking manner.
1. Giulio Romano, Vulcan, fresco, Sala dei Cavalli, Palazzo Te, Mantua.
Raphael4. Thefts of Giulio’s studies from the workshop testify to their contemporary value and collectors including and ever since Vasari have sought them avidly. Giulio himself seems always to have cherished and protected his own drawings, partly as a means of establishing a form of copyright and to the extent of making signed copies of his projects as proof of his invention5.
The static and monumental aspect of the present drawing implies that it was preparatory for a trompe l’oeil sculpture conceived as forming part of a decorative ensemble. No secure connection has been found, either recently or while the drawing belonged to the Pounceys, but the fine attention to detail and the squaring over the whole sheet do suggest that it was made with a specific purpose in mind. Avery comparable figure with the same formal weight and classical poise, a figure of Vulcan, can be seen frescoed on the wall of the sala dei Cavalli in the Palazzo Te (fig. 1)6. The use of the shadow to give three-dimensionality to the grisaille frescoed figure, which is painted as if standing in a niche, is matched exactly in the present drawing. A comparison may also be made, in figure type and execution with a study of Prudence, now in the Harvard University Art Museum; that drawing has delicate modelling in wash and the same light squaring7. Though possibly made earlier in his career, it may have been used as a model for the statue of Venus Pudica, a further trompe l’oeil fresco in the sala dei Cavalli.
With the shield resting at his side, the man depicted is perhaps an old warrior. The distortions of the large hands, long arms and narrow head and shoulders lend the figure a clumsy charm. These characteristics can be seen quite often in Giulio’s late work: the figure of St. Longinus in the Louvre Nativity which is dated to around 15368 is an obvious example, in a grand painting; the fresco of Jupiter Enthroned in the Sala of Giulio’s own house in Mantua9 has a comparable spirit, while figures similar in both proportion and costume are to be found in the series of tapestry cartoons illustrating the Triumph of Scipio probably executed in the mid-1530s10. The loose, fringed drapery and buckled cloth shoes liken him to many of the figures of captives in these designs but there is nothing of subjugation in the pose which clearly derives from the classical prototypes of soldiers and senators Giulio knew so well from his study of roman antiquity11. Interestingly the black chalk study on the verso, though slight and faint, clearly outlines the shape of a niche with pedestal, curved back and arched top. This is a seemingly rare example of the artist using both sides of the paper and though the niche as drawn is smaller than the figure on the recto, it is entirely concordant with the idea of the sheet being preparatory for a trompe l’oeil sculpture12.
Venice c. 1510 - 1561 Venice
Pen and brown ink 129 by 206 mm. (5 by 8 1/2 in.)
PROVENANCE: François Alziari, Baron de Malaussena (L.1887), his numbering in black ink, lower right, 146; His sale, Paris, Clément, 18 April 1866, lot 279, as Franco, Études du Christ. Croquis à la plume; Jules Braut, Paris; His sale, Paris, Drouot, 28-29 April 1939, probably lot 27, Feuille d’étude. Plume double face, encadrée; Private collection, Normandy. Born in Venice, the painter, draftsman, and engraver Battista Franco spent his formative years in Rome and Florence, where he associated with several of Michelangelo’s followers. They included the sculptors Raffaello da Montelupo, with whom he worked on the triumphal entry for Charles V in 1536, and Bartolommeo Ammanati, with whom he resided for a time. After employment in the service of Cosimo de’Medici in Florence in the later 1530s, he was in Rome during the following decade working in the oratory of San Giovanni Decollato. He also spent some of that time working in the Marches creating frescoes for the choir of Urbino cathedral as well as in nearby Osimo and Fabriano. After a final Roman sojourn in the early 1550s, when he frescoed the Gabrielli Chapel in S. Maria sopra Minerva, Franco returned to his native city around 1552 where he remained until his death in 1561. As a leading representative of Central Italian disegno, his talents were widely recognised by the intellectual elite of Venice, among them humanists, architects, and diplomats. Revered by his contemporaries, Franco is particularly admired today for his fine and delicate draughtsmanship. A new addition to Franco’s corpus of drawings, this sheet of pose studies showing two alternate views of a seated Christ bound at the wrist was intended for either an Ecce Homo or more likely, a Mocking of Christ. Apreliminary drawing, it closely resembles a study by Franco in the Louvre (fig. 1), which shares the same format, handling and similar dimensions1. The Paris drawing also includes studies of a column base as well as architectural sketches including a door frame on the verso. It appears to represent a slightly later stage in Franco’s design for in it Christ wears his crown of thorns and holds a reed sceptre in his bound hands.
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The present drawing and related study in Paris are likely to have been made in connection with Franco’s work in the Marches during his sojourns there c.1543-1551. As Vasari relates, Guidobaldo II della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, summoned Franco from Rome to Urbino to fresco the vault of the main cathedral, the artist’s most ambitious project to date2. He also had the artist design maiolica including a double service of wares illustrating scenes from the Trojan War. Although Vasari does not mention it, the Duke also commissioned Franco to decorate the large chapel to the left of the main altar, the so-called “Cappella del Corpo di Christo”, dedicated to the Sacraments. The commission is referred to in a letter of 7 December 1551 to the Duke from his secretary listing outstanding debts the Duke
1. Battista Franco, Two Studies of Christ, Département des Arts Graphiques, Musée du Louvre, Paris
2. Battista Franco, Design for the Semi-Dome of an Apse, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
owed Franco among them the cartoni as well as expenses for the gilding of the cornices, friezes and festoons for the cappella grande3 (the completed central vault almost entirely destroyed in the earthquake of 1789 and of which only two large fragments now survive). Also mentioned in the letter is the fact that work on the cappella del Corpo di Cristo was suspended despite it being ready for painting (“tutta armata et come dicono aricciata”, implying that the stuccowork and gilding was already complete)4. The Secretary also reported that Franco sought permission from the Duke to resume work in the chapel to prevent further embarrassment while also requesting payment for drawings, ‘carte et historie’, relating to the chapel decorations5 .
While for reasons unknown, the decoration of the Chapel of the Sacraments was never completed, its intended appearance may be gleaned from the vast number of preparatory drawings that are likely to be connected to it. Franco’s splendid study for the semi-dome and upper wall in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (fig.2) includes nine scenes, in square or rectangular compartments separated by grotesque borders, from the Life of Christ and the Virgin6 . A drawing in the Steiner collection in New York shows part of the mid-to lower section of the decoration with the same scenes and additional episodes from the Life of the Virgin and part of a door7 . The entire lower register with alternate scenes and two doors is reproduced in a drawing in Chatsworth8. At least eleven further drawings relating to the project have been identified and attest to the elaborate nature of the decoration that was to include decorative borders in stuccowork presumably gilt to sumptuous effect9 .
Importantly, both the London and New York designs feature the Mocking of Christ in the compartment in the third row at the left. Christ’s tormentors are clearly visible though Christ himself is not (he is partly obscured from view by the putti carrying generous swags of garlands). In addition, the architectural sketches on the verso of the present sheet, as well as those on the reverse of the related Louvre drawing, bear a close resemblance to the architectural elements in the lower register of the drawings in New York and Chatsworth (notably the entablature and door frame). Likewise, the sketches of columns find their counterparts in the larger drawings. It is not too hard to imagine the lightly sketched shield on the verso of the present sheet, now seen empty, containing the Duke of Urbino’s coat of arms – the large oak branch with acorns. The crossed keys, already lightly indicated above the shield, are a likely reference to the two Della Rovere Popes, Sixtus IV and Julius II. The figures flanking the shield represent two of the Theological Virtues: Charity with child at left and Faith holding a cross at right. With the addition of Hope, the Theological Virtues feature prominently in the intarsia decoration of the studiolo in the Ducal palace nearby.
Franco probably designed the ten small prints illustrating scenes from the Life of Christ around the time he was exploring the theme of Christ’s Passion for the Chapel of the Sacraments. The engravings were most likely inspired by Dürer’s own small Passion cycle. Among them is a representation of the Mocking of Christ, pendant drawings for which are in Chatsworth and the Albertina10. The positioning of the hands of the figure of Christ on the left of the present study is similar to that in the drawings and the print, which is in reverse sense.
Well-versed in portraying the Mocking of Christ theme, Franco would have occasion to illustrate it once again. Vasari tells us that around 1552 Franco moved back to his native Venice in hopes of improving his fortune. Earning a reputation as the “Michelangelo of Venice”, Franco enjoyed uninterrupted employment until his death in 1561. Among his achievements was a large-scale painting of the Mocking of Christ, now untraced. As Vasari writes, “for M. Antonio della Vecchia, a Venetian, he painted in a picture with figures of the size of life and very beautiful Christ crowned with Thorns, and about them some Pharisees, who are mocking Him”11.
Anne Varick Lauder
Sant’ Angelo in Vado 1529 - 1566 Rome
Pen and brown ink and wash, over black chalk. With a fragment of the circular framing line at the left edge. Diameter: 183 mm. (7 1/4 in.)
The delightful play of light and shade which animates this crowd of figures is an identifying feature of this newly-discovered drawing by Taddeo Zuccaro. In subject, scale and style it belongs with the artist’s designs for majolica. The best known of these are the various studies connected to the so-called “Spanish Service” which was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino in 1560 to be presented to King Philip II of Spain. Vasari describes Taddeo “making all the drawings for a service which the Duke had carried out in earthenware at Castel Durante...”1. It is thought more likely that the service was actually made in the Fontana workshop in Urbino and a document of 1562 records that the pieces were decorated with scenes from the life of Julius Caesar. Much of the service is lost and what remains is scattered through public and private collections; the process of documenting pieces from the service and the related designs was begun by John Gere in his 1963 Burlington Magazine article2 and continues in the Zuccaro scholarship today3.
Drawings associated with Taddeo’s majolica designs may be described as falling into three categories. There are drawings which can be securely linked with pieces from the “Spanish Service”, and clearly attributed to Taddeo, examples of which are the studies of Soldiers destroying a Bridge at Holkham Hall and in the Stockholm Nationalmuseum, these correspond to the decoration of a dish in the Victoria and Albert Museum4 (fig.1). There are also those circular compositional drawings by Taddeo with other subject matter which have not been connected to actual maiolica pieces but which appear to have been made for that purpose; examples are the Design for the Decoration of a Circular Dish with Marine Creatures, formerly in the Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia, and the Bathing of Diana in the Metropolitan Musuem5. Finally there are numerous drawings by Federico Zuccaro and other studio assistants which are proven or considered to belong to the “Spanish Service” commission and exist as proof of the scale and importance of the project: these include a Roman Triumphal procession in the Louvre, another of the same scene in the Pierpont Morgan Library and a drawing of an Enthroned Emperor receiving Homage in the National Gallery of Scotland6.
The present work would appear to belong to the second category. Though it has not been possible to find a connection with a published piece of maiolica and the subject cannot be linked with Julius Caesar, the handling, the nature of the design and the evidence of the circular framing line link it clearly with this moment in Taddeo’s career. The circular design does of course also bring to mind the decorative scheme at Caprarola, which Taddeo had begun working on in 1559 and for which various circular drawings survive. Indeed John Gere noted that there are close resemblances between certain of the maiolica compositions and the designs for the Farnese histories, allegories and classical scenes at Caprarola7. On stylistic grounds, it is also worthwhile pointing out the similarities this drawing has with yet another project dating from these years, the frescoes of Scenes from the Life of Alexander in the Palazzo Mattei Caetani in Rome. Characteristics of the present drawing such as the elegant figures, delicate-featured facial types, slightly comical horses and even the frieze-like composition all have parallels in the compositions of the Alexander project which was commissioned by Alessandro Mattei in around 15608.
actual size
1. Maiolica dish from the “Spanish Service”, Urbino, Soldiers destroying a Bridge, after a design by Taddeo Zuccaro, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Gere also points out, as seems relevant here too, that Taddeo’s maiolica designs, in their sophistication and pictorial complexity, tend not to make allowance for the limitations of the medium and the difficulty the maiolica painters would have had in translating complicated designs. Writing in 1963, he describes the maiolica drawings, and the intense care Taddeo took with them, as constituting “a series fully as important and as characteristic of the genius of this still misunderstood and underestimated Mannerist as his well-known secular fresco-cycles at Bracciano and Caprarola”. Forty five years later, Taddeo Zuccaro’s importance is perhaps no longer underestimated and this period of revitalised “istoriata” painting carried out in Urbino under Guidobaldo II della Rovere, is also considered to be one of the most remarkable in the history of Maiolica9.
The identification of the subject was kindly suggested by David Scrase. The episode from Livy’s history in which Cloelia is more commonly represented is the moment when she and her female companions first flee the Etruscan camp to return across the Tiber to the Romans. Cloelia is generally shown on horseback, in the water. The present work appears to be unusual for depicting a moment further on in the story. Lars Porsenna, the Etruscan King, impressed by Cleolia’s bravery and as a signal of trust, has granted her a horse and the freedom to choose certain of the hostages, to return to her own people. Cloelia chooses the young men and boys among the party and would seem here to have arrived in Rome to the joyous greetings of mothers, fathers and soldiers from the Roman army.
A fascinating addition to the corpus of Taddeo’s drawings, this lively and very charming study appears as a further indication of the extent of the artist’s work for Maiolica projects. Given the fact that he had been summoned to Urbino to paint a portrait of Virginia, Guidobaldo’s daughter, on the occasion of her marriage to Federico Borromeo, it is not hard to imagine that Taddeo may even have been working on a series to illustrate scenes from the lives of Roman heroines.
Siena 1525 - 1579/1588 Naples
Bears old inscription recto: Marco da Siena and a later, possibly 18th Century inscription verso: Marco da Siena… Comprato in Napoli. Pen and brown ink and brown and blue wash heightened with white. On three pieces of paper, joined by the artist and prepared with blue wash. Laid down on an old backing of blue paper. Inscribed di Marco da Siena on the recto, lower right. Further inscribed Marco da Siena… Comprato in Napoli on the verso, probably in an 18th century hand. 292 by 207 mm. (11 1/2 by 8 1/4 in.)
Marco Pino’s career stretched from the esoteric world of early sixteenth century Siena, via Rome and the monumental achievements which took place there in the mid-16th Century and on to Naples and that city’s burgeoning artistic life in which Pino played a central role. A student of Beccafumi, he left Siena in the 1540s to work under Perino del Vaga on the vast fresco schemes of the Castel Sant’Angelo. By 1557 he was living and working in Naples, visiting Rome some ten years later to execute the splendid Resurrection in the Oratory of the Gonfalone and returning again to Naples after two years. He attracted the admiration of Michelangelo during his early years in Rome and received his advice; he designed and executed four scenes from the Life of Alexander for Perino and in Naples he established a highly successful workshop bringing with him all that he had learned from the great Roman masters. A complex series of frescos for the Benedictine Monastery at Montecassino (destroyed in 1913) and numerous altarpieces and paintings are his legacy in the Southern region, along with the experience and taste which he passed on to his assistants, many of whom absorbed and later disseminated his convoluted, animated and often, itself monumental, style.
This elaborately constructed sheet is a fascinating reflection of the various influences at play in Marco Pino’s work. The drawing shows echoes of the nervous, scratchy penwork of Beccafumi and yet the figures have a serpentine elegance indicative of a later, post- Perino date. The painterly background with its vibrantly luminous use of blue wash and white heightening, suggests meanwhile an awareness of landscape drawings by Polidoro, such as the Raising of Lazarus in the Hamburg Kunsthalle, and through Polidoro a link to the Northern painters Scorel and Patiner1. The elongated, tentacular hands and angular, split-toed feet are morphological details typical of Pino, as are the gracefully curled hair of Christ and his “blind” eyes. Together with the particular manner in which the musculature and drapery are defined with lively ribbons and hooks of penwork, these characteristics are closely paralleled in a fine study of The Trinity in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which is described by Andrea Zezza, author of the monograph on the artist, as being one of the most beautiful drawings of Pino’s mature period2.
Andrea Zezza discusses two existing altarpieces of the Baptism of Christ, both executed by Marco Pino for churches in Naples3: in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and San Domenico Maggiore (fig.1). When this previously unpublished drawing was catalogued by Sotheby’s4, it was described as a preparatory study for the former which does indeed have a detailed and somewhat Northern landscape background. The arrangement and the poses of the figures of Christ and St John the Baptist in the present drawing are, however, much closer to that in the San Domenico Maggiore painting, to which a further study with wash and white heightening, currently in a private collection in Paris, has also recently been connected. This second drawing, shows the link with Perino del Vaga even more clearly. Indeed Popham believed it to be by him though he only knew the work from a print by Rosaspina5. Both the San Domenico Maggiore painting and the Paris drawing have personifications of the River Jordan in the foreground. These figures are irresistibly reminiscent of Vasarian and Salviatesque prototypes. The composition of the
1. Marco Pino, Baptism of Christ, San Domenico Maggiore, Naples
present drawing reflects a different stage in conception, the isolation of the figures and the broad and dreamy landscape giving a sense of space unusual amongst Pino’s mostly intensely crowded compositions. Here it is worth drawing attention to a fresco of the Baptism of Christ, again painted in Naples, in the Albertini chapel of the church of SS. Severino e Sossio6, which, as in the drawing, shows the artist giving prominence to the landscape setting and to the divine light streaming from the sky. The San Domenico Maggiore painting is generally dated to circa 1564 by virtue of a dedicatory inscription on the altar above which it was placed. Zezza considers that the picture may even date from a few years earlier as it is still so close “to the world of Daniele, of Salviati and of Michelangelo”7. He notes that the San Giovanni dei Fiorentini version of the composition belongs to the 1560s, probably the latter part of that decade (noting separately that the landscape prefigures the style of paintings of the following decade8) and that the Albertini chapel frescoes are dated to 1571, again on the basis of an inscription. As the figures in the present drawing are indeed closest to the San Domenico Maggiore altarpiece and the span of years between the three pictures mentioned above is relatively short, it may be, that if not an actual study for the San Domenico Maggiore altarpiece, this fine, inspired and certainly mature drawing, is one that shows the artist revisiting and experimenting with a slightly earlier theme and composition.
Siena 1563 - 1610 Siena
Black and red chalk. 310 by 255 mm. (121/4 by 9 3/4 in.)
Franceso Vanni’s career flourished in Siena and covered the twenty years spanning the turn of the century. Following an apprenticeship in his native town with his stepfather Arcangelo Salimbeni, he trained further in Rome with Giovanni de’ Vecchi and possibly also in Bologna. Vanni’s popularity was in part due to his absorption of contemporary influences, primarily those of Barocci, Federico Zuccaro and the early work of the Carracci. His perfection of the desired Counter-Reformation style which demanded clarity of narrative, naturalism and deeply felt emotion was extremely successful with the many churches in Siena wishing to renew their decoration in line with the Counter- Reformation dictates. A brilliant and expressive colourist, like Barocci he was also a dedicated and painstaking draughtsman. As described by Marco Ciampolini, Vanni’s method of work was one in which “Each component of every painting is carefully anticipated by an impressive apparatus of drawings, almost suggesting that he considered the preparation more important than the final execution ...“1.
The present drawing shows the manner in which an artist, much in demand, could reinterpret aspects of a composition to fulfil different commissions. This delicate and detailed study is a fascinating component in the evolution of a composition by Vanni which includes at least three other drawings, two related paintings and a connection to a painting by Ludovico Carracci (fig.1). The latter, a picture in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, generally dated to circa 1595, has been published on numerous occasions as either the source for, or itself inspired by, Vanni’s project for the Vision of St Francis 2. It shows a nocturnal landscape with the Virgin standing beside St Francis who tenderly holds the Christ Child. In the background another Franciscan looks on, his hands held in prayer. Closest in composition to the Rijksmuseum picture is a drawing in the Uffizi, executed in heavy brown wash and white heightening and covered in varnish (fig.2). Of the two other related drawings, which are both in the Louvre - inv. 2008 and 2011 (figs.3 and 4) - the former, is a study in red and black chalk, corresponding very closely with the Uffizi study. The latter, which has white heightening and incised outlines, is more like a cartoon and shows only the two figures of the central group3. Both the Louvre studies depict the Virgin gazing at the Christ Child, while the Uffizi bozzetto and the Rijksmuseum painting show her looking away, absorbed in her own world. Dating the above-mentioned drawings to circa 1595, Peter Anselm Reidl proffers the most straightforward explanation: that the Uffizi study is a near contemporaneous paraphrase by Vanni of Lodovico’s painting and that it, and the two Louvre drawings, probably relate to the two versions of the Vision of St Francis mentioned in a 1649 document4; one painted for the Franciscan monastery in Lyon, which is now in the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence5 and the other made for the city of Lucca, now lost.
Like the Lyons picture, in which the Virgin has been placed to the left and is now seated and the praying Franciscan has moved to the foreground, the composition of the present drawing is a development. While the relation between the Virgin and St. Francis with the Christ Child is still central to the purpose of the composition and very similar to the Louvre and Uffizi drawings, we are led into the scene by the positions and gazes of a female saint kneeling to the right and by two donors looking upwards, in prayer, from the bottom edge. The Virgin’s hands (and as is usual with Vanni, these are somewhat jointless and glove-like) were held downwards in the other drawings but are now also joined in prayer, and although rocks and vegetation are sketched in, the Virgin appears to stand on clouds. The scene is watched over by groups of cherubs.
2.G. G. Savoldo, The Madonna in Glory with Saints, Pinacotecadi Brera, Milan. |
3. G. G. Savoldo, Seated Pilgrim, Graphischen Sammlung Albertina,Vienna. |
commissioned by the Della Torre Family, whose coat-of-arms is visible at the lower right corner of the canvas5. The general disposition of the scene is similar in both pictures, but the poses of the figures are different. Furthermore, Saints Dominic and Jerome have been substituted with Saints Zeno (Bishop of Verona) and Bernard, and the Verona altarpiece lacks the two angels flanking the Madonna and Child in the Brera canvas. The figure of St.Peter is also different in the two canvases. For example, while the saint looks up towards the Madonna and Child in the Verona painting, he looks at the spectator in the Brera altarpiece; St.Peter has his left arm holding the book and hanging down in the Verona canvas, whereas it is folded and pressed against his chest in the Brera picture; the saint wears his yellow cloak over his shoulders in the Verona painting, whereas it is tied around his waist in the Brera altarpiece.
The figure of St. Peter in our sheet is significantly closer to that of the same figure in the Verona painting than to the St.Peter in the Brera altarpiece, which indicates that it was intended as a study for the St.Peter in the former canvas rather than for the latter. Notwithstanding their similarity, the figures of St.Peter in the drawing and in the Verona altarpiece still differ in numerous details. For example, the physiognomy of the two figures of St.Peter differ and the shape of the folds of the drapery are significantly different in the painting and in the drawing, where, for instance, the saint’s habit is longer at the back of the figure; in the drawing, all five fingers of the saint’s hand holding the book are exposed, whereas in the painting, the thumb is hidden behind the book; the same book has no buckles and is partly covered by St.Peter’s cloak in the drawing, and the saint’s right hand is not holding the keys which appear in the painting. Besides the present sheet, only two other figure studies by Savoldo have survived: a drawing of a Seated Pilgrim, in the Albertina, Vienna (fig.3) 6 and a sheet of Saint John the Evangelist, in the
3. F. Vanni, The Vision of St. Francis, Musée du Louvre, Paris. |
4. F. Vanni, The Vision of St. Francis, Musée du Louvre, Paris. |
present drawing is clearly a devotional rather than civic work. Its gentle, expressive manner evokes sentiment and intensity, the skilfully employed two colours of chalk conveying the artist’s intent with clarity and a subtle grace. Vanni alternates the use of red and black chalk as under-drawing and shading thereby bringing movement and light to this only superficially static composition. It is interesting to consider the putto left partly unfinished at the top right – the delicate primary drawing, here done in red chalk, is left visible in the head and neck which Vanni has not yet worked up with the black chalk. This manner of working through areas of a composition could suggest that the drawing is a ricordo of a commission, possibly made on the instructions of the donors depicted. Alternatively, Vanni may have been executing the drawing in order to have it reproduced as an engraving. According to Mariette, he did exactly this for the painting in Lyon, producing a drawn modello which he gave to Cornelius Galle to engrave9. Vanni appears to have made only three small etchings himself (apparently as private exercises as they were never published), however his habit of giving designs to engravers such as Cornelis Galle, Peter de Jode and Philippe Thomasin is well recorded10.
Gorinchem 1566 - 1651 Utrecht
PROVENANCE: Dr. C. R Rudolf (L.2811b) twice, on the backing and on the mount; Paul Drey, London, 1971.
LITERATURE: M.G. Roethlisberger, Abraham Bloemart and his Sons, Paintings and Prints, Ghent 1993, vol.1, p.94, under no.48 and p.422, D7 and reproduced vol.II, fig.108; J. Bolten, Abraham Bloemart, circa 1565-1651, The Drawings, Leiden 2007, vol.I, p.56, no.112, reproduced vol.II, p.63.
The surviving body of Bloemaert’s drawings, which greatly outnumbers those of his contemporary artists, shows him to have been a fervent draughtsman. Drawings of all kinds exist, from figure sketches and head and limb studies to landscapes and views of vernacular architecture. There are refined compositions and finished presentation drawings and all this work was kept in the studio in huge albums which remained with the family, intact, for most of a century after Bloemaert’s death. It appears that Bloemaert used these volumes in the manner of source books and Jaap Bolten compares this to the practice of Rembrandt who, similarly, had a large studio and a wish to educate1. Bloemaert was an active member of the Utrecht Guild of St Luke and one of the founding members of the Utrecht Drawing Academy. Baldinucci described his position as a member of the artistic establishment: “In the years after 1611, the Utrecht school of painting would flourish and Bloemart’s role as pedagogue in this period of blossoming can hardly be over-estimated”2.
The composition of this animated drawing leads from the foreground through a series of gestures up to the ceremonial table, the two priests with the Christ Child lit by a tall, fast burning altar candle. The Virgin Mary kneels to the right, hands reaching out as if to protect her child, the male figure at centre seems also to be calming or silencing, as if a crowd has gathered below the steps. These framing figures with their extravagant reactions, often seen from the back, appear repeatedly in Bloemart’s early compositions and are an emblematic device of the period, seen particularly in works of the Prague school. As Marcel Roethlisberger pointed out, the foreground figure of a woman, cut by the edge of the drawing is similar in type to one in the print of the Adoration of the Shepherds, engraved by Matham, for which a preparatory drawing is now known in the Fogg Art Museum3. Though more worked up, the Harvard drawing, shares the same technique and has a similar scale of figures and openness of composition to the present work. Another very comparable male figure with arms outstretched is found in the foreground of the Christ and the Woman with an Issue of Blood, signed and dated 1595, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York4.
In his cataloguing for the present drawing, Roethlisberger pointed out a record of a similarly square painting of the same subject in the sale of Maas de Groot, The Hague, 22 December 1924, lot 34 but as this has not been traced, the two cannot be securely linked; indeed it appears that much of Bloemaert’s output prior to 1604 has been lost5. The numerous chalk figures sketched in behind the priests suggest that the scene was to be a crowded one, the crowds described in the background and suggested in the foreground. The inscribed date of 1601 fits well on stylistic grounds although Jaap Bolten has suggested that it was added – presumably by the artist – at a later time than the signature. A further comparison can be made on stylistic grounds with the sketch for the devotional image of the Madonna and Christ Child with SS. Catherine and Agnes dated 1597, now in the National Gallery of Ottawa6.
1. Marco Pino, Baptism of Christ, San Domenico Maggiore, Naples
Pieve di Teco 1592 - 1668 Pieve di Teco
Pen and brown ink and wash over black chalk (recto); pen and brown ink and grey wash over black chalk (verso). 414 by 275mm. (16 1/2 by 10 3/4 in.)
Benso appears as something of a chameleon in his drawings, as this sheet demonstrates. Mary Newcome Schleier defines four principal styles visible in his work1: the finely detailed studies in the style of Ansaldo; pen and wash drawings which are described as being close to Paggi when influenced by van Dyck; tightly crosshatched figure studies possibly intended as designs for prints and the so-called “bound-body” drawings which, with their looped eyes, hands and legs, reveal the link from Paggi back to Cambiaso. This experimental approach to drawing may have been matched in his painted works but no dated pictures survive from the late 1630s to the 1650s and his fresoces from this period tend to be heavily restored and repainted.
The impressive, vibrant drawing on the recto of this large sheet might be considered as belonging to the “bound-body” group, the bizarre and inventive type as referred to by Soprani. It is similar to one in Copenhagen, the Martyrdom of St Lawrence, again a sketchy, experimental drawing with a composition heading upwards, hectic penwork and pools of wash defining the highly shadowed figures in expressive poses2. The present drawing, though not obviously architectural in its setting, has the same sense of deep space and tilted perspective as the Copenhagen martyrdom scene, which is set in a high arched throne room and which is dated by Mary Newcome Schleier to the mid 1630s. Another comparison can be made with a study in the Uffizi, nearly as large as the present one, illustrating the Martyrdom of St. Agatha which, as Mary Newcome points out, is full of nervous movement in the lines and strong light and shade3.
verso |
The newly-discovered verso of the present sheet is an example of Benso’s interest in copying other masters, at first as training in the workshop of Paggi but probably throughout his career using the prints and drawings in his own possession. Drawn in the academic Genoese style, Benso has here made a rapid but accurate copy after part of the left hand section of Tintoretto’s huge composition in the Scuola di San Rocco. No journey by Benso to Venice is recorded but he would surely have known the work of the great sixteenth century Venetians through engravings. A likely source is Agostino Carracci’s exceptionally famous print which was made in 1588-89; large in scale (over a meter long), faithful in detail and in the same direction as the original composition, the only minor differences with the painting are in the background and the lighting of the side sections. Carlo Ridolfi in 1648 recorded that “everybody knows this painting [Tintoretto’s Crucifixion] through the excellent print by Agostino Carraccio [sic] from which it is easy to see the beauty of the [original]”4. Indeed Benso’s broad shading in grey wash used to identify the fall of light does appear to follow Agostino’s print. If this is indeed the source, Benso would seem to be following part of the central section, the engraving being made up of three sheets.
Haarlem c. 1580/90 - 1662 Haarlem
Gouache and grey wash, with touches of gum arabic, on vellum, within black ink framing lines; signed in grey ink PHolsteyn fecit; bears two old labels on the reverse of the frame, inscribed Penige Europiso [?], Capellen/en Forme X and P:Holsteyn Fecit/1610. 177 by 301 mm (7 by 11 3/4 in.)
Pieter Holsteyn the Elder is renowned for his exquisite depictions of flowers, birds and mammals. Anear contemporary of Joris Hoefnagal, whose works of scientific naturalism the artist would undoubtedly have been aware, Holsteyn’s small scale, brightly coloured and minutely detailed drawings were coveted by connoisseurs and collectors alike. His composite studies of insects are considered to be amongst his most accomplished works.
This exquisite sheet is of particular importance not only because of the rarity of Holsteyn’s extant entymological studies, but also because of its comparatively large scale. Holsteyn here depicts a selection of bugs, moths and butterflies. They are rendered with such commensurate skill and scientific exactitude, that each variety is easily identifiable. The following species are here illustrated: the Camberwell Beauty (mympalis antiopa); the Painted Lady (cynthia cardin); the Pale Yellow Clouded Female (colias hyale); the Comma (polygonia c.album); the Clouded Yellow Male (colias crocea); the Peacock (inachis io); the Cinnabar Moth (tyria jacobaeae); the Blue and Red Rhinoceros beetles; the Shield bug (graphosonia italicum); the common grasshopper, and the dragonfly, of the variety the common Blue Damselfly Male. Executed with such systematic precision, it seems likely that this sheet was originally commissioned by a collector with a strong interest in entymology or lepidoptery, and the drawing may even have formed part of a larger set of studies destined for the drawers of a collector’s cabinet. However, in treatment of the subject matter, Holsteyn here draws with such delicacy and subtlety that he transcends mere scientific record. With a medley of pen strokes, the artist distinguishes the different anatomical components of each species. In the tender rendering of the dragonfly, minute, feathery strokes of pen describe the fibrous translucence of the wings, whilst short, parallel lines illustrate the hirsute surfaces of the thorax and legs, and the crepuscular glint of the eyes. With a palette of cool blues and greys, strengthened by red, yellow and green, the insects are infused with clarity and freshness, their finely drawn shadows rendering them almost tangibly solid.
Only two such sheets by the artist have been offered for sale in recent years. One, unsigned, was in the Dreesman Collection sale in 20021. The other, signed and dated 16362, is considerably less elaborate than the present sheet and smaller in scale though interestingly it included the same robust rhinoceros beetle with cobalt blue shoulders as is seen in this drawing3.
If the old inscription and date now pasted to the back of the frame can be believed, this magnificent and wonderfully preserved sheet belongs to the early part of Holstein the Elder’s career and therefore still connects to the fine miniaturist tradition of the sixteenth century and the taste for natural curiosities.
Brussels c. 1580-90 - 1650 Brussels
Oil on paper 237 by 155mm. (9 3/8 by 6 1/8 in.)
Atalented draughtsman and engraver, Anthonis Sallaert began his artistic training in the studio of Michel de Bordeaux. In 1606, he is recorded as enrolled in the Register of the St Luke’s Guild in Brussels, becoming Master in 1613 and serving as Dean of the Guild in 1633 and 1648. Apainter to the Court of the Archduke Albert, Sallaert executed numerous commissions, mostly of a religious nature, but also some portraits and historical events. He produced paintings for the Jesuit Church and Town Hall, and also worked for the smaller village churches in the environs of Brussels, most notably, a cycle of twelve paintings depicting the History of the Church at Alsemberg, for Onze Lieve Vrouwkerk at Alsemberg (1647-1649). He was also an accomplished engraver and, as with many of his contemporaries active in the Spanish Netherlands, was greatly influenced by Rubens, with whom he studied and occasionally collaborated. Secular subjects, including mythological themes, occur in his tapestry designs, such as those for the Story of Theseus (1620-1635), woven in the Brussels workshop of Jan Raes the Younger. Sallaert played a significant role in reviving the manufacture of tapestry at Brussels, and in 1646, he proudly claimed that twenty-four sets of tapestries had been woven from his designs. Sallaert’s two sons, Jean and Melchior, were painters, and his daughter, Catherine, provided descriptive texts to accompany Salllaert’s paintings for the Alsemberg commission, and completed the cycle after his death in 1650.
The Four Fathers were a popular choice for the decoration of churches, not only for their theological significance, but also for aesthetic reasons. In a universal sense, the four figures represented the Four Temperaments and, by implication, the other cosmic quartets – the seasons, the elements, the times of day, and the ages of man, encircling, like the cardinal points of the compass, the Deity who is at its invisible centre. In a more practical sense, being four in number, they aptly occupied the architectonic space provided by the lunettes or pendentives beneath the dome of the church.
In the centre of this overtly dramatic interpretation stands St. Lambert who, with his martyr’s palm and book, receives Christ’s benediction, suggesting that perhaps the composition was made for an altarpiece or church dedicated to this 7th century Bishop of Maastricht who is generally portrayed, as here, trampling upon his murderers. He is surrounded by the Four Latin Fathers of the Church – Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Gregory the Great – all of whom hold the Papal attribute of a triple crozier staff. The fluidity of the brushwork and intense, expressive use of white paint derive from the Baroque style of Rubens. By draping the speared and crushed heretics across a ledge, Sallaert cleverly suggests the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface.
The present sheet is stylistically comparable to another religious composition, depicting a Standing Saint, possibly Saint Gaetano, in the collection of Alfred Moir1. Though oval in shape, the drawing shares the same compositional device of placing the figure on a ledge to draw the viewer’s eye into the picture space.
Siegen 1577 - 1640 Antwerp
Black chalk and pen and brown ink and wash, the lower left edge made up. Bears inscription: P. P. R… 296 by 163 mm. (11 1/2 by 6 1/2 in.)
PROVENANCE: Sale, Fischer, Lucerne, 2 June 1945, lot 232 (identified as Saint Norbert).
Recently rediscovered, this characteristically dynamic example of Rubens’s work was identified as a depiction of St Lambert by Dr Paul Taylor of the Warburg Institute. According to Julius Held, “not a single drawing was actually ever signed by the master ...”1 and the letters on the drawing are not a signature but an inscription, probably of the 17th or 18th century. While it appears not to have been recorded in the extensive literature for the artist and cannot, as yet, be connected to a surviving project, this study clearly has the presence and quality to justify the old attribution to Rubens’s hand.
Hardly known outside of the Low Countries, St. Lambert was a seventh century bishop of Maastricht, who was murdered in a chapel on his estate near Liege as an act of revenge. Established as a martyr and patron of marital fidelity, his feast day is celebrated on 17th September. A number of churches in the area around Antwerp, Liege and Maastricht are dedicated to this saint although few well-known representations of him exist. Rubens has depicted the bishop, with book and crozier in hand, standing upon the bodies of his murderers; two can be seen under his feet, with an axe lying across the arm of the right hand one and there are indications of a third figure at the right edge.
The relatively obscure subject of this drawing would seem to pre-suppose that it belongs to a period when Rubens was active in the Southern Netherlands but not entirely swept up in one of the colossal Church or State projects which overtook his studio at certain times. Projects with local subjects, executed by Rubens for his ecclesiastical compatriots, are scattered through the thirty years of his career which he spent on and off in Antwerp. The years 1611-12 had seen Rubens working on an altarpiece for Ghent cathedral illustrating the life of St Bavo, another 7th century Flemish saint, the oil sketches for which are in the National Gallery, London2. The closest parallel, however, in conception and even in the figure and facial types, is with a depiction of St Norbert dated to circa 1624, an oil sketch painted by Rubens as the model for a sculpture3 (fig.1). The sculpture, believed to have been carved by his friend and collaborator, Hans von Mildert, is one of a pair, the other being St Michael defeating Satan for which a second oil sketch also exists4. They were made to flank Rubens’s altarpiece The Adoration of the Magi, which was completed in 1624 for the church of the Abbey of St Michael in Antwerp. Though the alabaster figures are conventional and somewhat stiff, Ruben’s oil sketches are both animated and full of expression. It is easy to imagine that the present drawing was intended for a figure of very much the same type: the stately and dignified bishop calmly subduing the forces of evil which, in the representations of both St Norbert and St Michael, as well as in the St. Lambert, are shown sprawling, trapped and uncomfortably extended, over what was or might become the pedestal of the sculpture5. The figure of St Lambert has a solidity and monumentality very much in keeping with a sculptural project but Rubens has also added a pictorial element in the suggestion of a background: clouds or perhaps puffs of smoke appear to the right of the bishop extending out in black chalk beyond the pools of wash which suggest the figure’s shadow.
While the St Norbert and St Michael oil sketches are dated, as previously mentioned to circa 1624, as Held admitted, “the chronology of Rubens’s drawings...is unusually difficult to establish”6. In terms of the drawing style, the closest parallel to the present work is with a
1. Sir Peter Paul Rubens, St. Norbert overcoming Tanchelm, oil on panel, Private collection.
study of three women (fig.2), which probably dates from the early 1630s (it is generally related to a painting of the Three Graces, now in the Prado, Madrid which was produced at that time)7. Though that drawing (now in the State Library of Warsaw) is executed with two colours of chalk, black and red, the forceful use of a strong, oily black chalk and the intense sweeps of a brush laden with brown wash are identical, and in both drawings the thin pen lines which pick out details of the faces and limbs act as a form of shorthand, conveying expression and confirming the poses. Both drawings are energetic, extremely confident and somewhat painterly. This latter characteristic, which may also be relevant to the dating, links the present drawing with other preparatory oil sketches of the 1620s and 1630s; the medium was, by then, Rubens’s preferred method for working out and presenting compositions. See for example the oil sketch of circa 1628 for the Virgin Honoured by Saints (now in the Staedelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt) or the Martyrdom of St Livinius (another 7th Century Flemish saint) of circa 1633-5, in the Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels8.
The recurring issue of distinguishing drawings by Rubens from those of his pupil Anthony van Dyck, especially during the years in which they worked together most closely (circa 1617-1620) cannot fail to come to mind here because of the powerful use of brown wash; indeed the Fischer sale description records that the drawing was once
2. Rubens, A Group of Three Richly-Dressed Young Women, drawing (recto), Print Room of the University Library, Warsaw.
thought to be by Van Dyck. Scholars of Rubens and of Van Dyck have worked to clarify the relationship between the two artists and to characterise their individual styles, see for example Anne-Marie Logan, “Distinguishing the Drawings by Anthony van Dyck from those of Peter Paul Rubens”, in Van Dyck 1599-1999, Conjectures and Refutations, Belgium 2001, pp.7-28 and Julius Held, in the eloquent Introduction to the revised edition of Rubens Selected Drawings, Oxford 1986, pp.12-13. Of course with a newly rediscovered work, the issue is a necessary one to address. A comparison with established drawings by the two artists serves, however, to highlight qualities in the present drawing which are entirely characteristic of Rubens. These qualities are both technical and stylistic. Most strikingly, there is the strong physical presence of the figure, the sense of weight and mass. This is accentuated by the thin and delicate pen work which gives subtle expression to the bishop’s head and, demarcates with just a few lines, the shape of hands, hair and foreshortened limbs. Despite the seeming rapidity of the sketch, Rubens creates a sense of solid realism which is rather different to the slightly generic and often elongated forms of Van Dyck’s figure studies. In what is a relatively conventional and solemn depiction of a religious subject, Rubens, perhaps the most versatile and innovative draughtsman of his century, here works up a vividly imagined figure and in the process creates an experimental, individual and highly atmospheric drawing9.
Antwerp 1599-1641 London
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over black chalk. Top left corner made up. 95 by 223 mm (3 3/4 by 8 3/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Earl of Aylesford (1786 – 1859), and Charles Fairfax Murray (According to an inscription in black chalk on the verso); Victor Koch, London; Dr & Mrs Francis Springell, Portinscale, Cumberland; Sotheby’s sale Mak Van Waay B.V., Amsterdam, 3rd May 1976, lot 203, illustrated p.120; Private Collection, France.
EXHIBITED: Keith Andrews, Drawings from the Collection of Dr. & Mrs Francis Springell, Exhibition Catalogue, Edinburgh, 1965, no.31; London, P & D Colnaghi, Loan Exhibition of Drawings by Old Masters from the Collection of Dr. & Mrs Francis Springell, 1959, no. 51; Edinburgh, Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Dr. & Mrs. Francis Springell, 1965, no. 31; Christopher Brown, The Drawings of Anthony van Dyck, Exhibition Catalogue, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York and The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1991, p.150, under no.39, fig.2.
LITERATURE: Heinz Rosenbaum, Der Junge Van Dyck, Munich, 1928, no.70; Horst Vey, Die Zeichnungen des Anton Van Dycks, Brussels, 1962, no. 22, pl.29 (as a copy); Julius Held, Review of Horst Vey, in the Art Bulletin, 1964, no.46, pp. 565-8 (as by Van Dyck).
In the Metamorphoses, Ovid describes at length how Acteon, a young huntsman, stumbles upon Diana as she bathes naked in a stream. He stares in fascination and awe at her beauty. But his harmless voyeurism leads to tragedy and, fearful that Acteon will boast of the vision he has encountered, Diana instantaneously turns him into a stag. The irony of the myth is of course that, the hunter then becomes the hunted, and Acteon is chased, caught and torn to pieces by fifty of his once loyal hunting dogs. Van Dyck’s drawing depicts the moment of Acteon’s metamorphosis; having just discovered Diana, he is shown turning his back to the goddess, raising his arms, and with his face assuming the characteristics of a stag’s head. Diana’s nymphs retreat in disarray, fearful of their mistress’ powers whilst, at the same time, protecting the goddess’ modesty from the young man’s innocent gaze.
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This strikingly bold and spirited drawing is the first of three drawings by which Van Dyck worked up his composition. The second sheet, rapidly sketched on the verso of a drawing now in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, is a double study for the figures of Diana, for the nymph protecting the goddess, and for the nymph in the foreground, fleeing the dramatic scene1. As Christopher Brown observes, the Berlin sheet probably represents a second stage in the composition, in which Van Dyck refined the two-figure groups2. The third drawing, in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, is a more elaborate and detailed study for the entire composition (fig.1)3. No painting for this composition is known, but the two nymphs at the right of the Louvre drawing recur in Van Dyck’s painting of Nymphs Surprised by Satyrs formerly in Berlin4, and again in a second painting in a Private Collection in Brussels5.
In his monograph on the artist’s drawings, Horst Vey questioned Van Dyck’s authorship for the present sheet and catalogued it as a copy. Julius Held was the first to point out Vey’s mistake and in his review of Vey’s monograph, he wrote: “Dr Vey has gone further than necessary in calling some drawings copies which, at least to me, have every appearance of being originals. This applies particularly to Nos. 22…”(the present drawing)6. The drawing has subsequently been accepted as an autograph work both by Keith Andrews and Christopher Brown7.
Antwerp 1593 - 1678 Antwerp
Watercolour and gouache over an under-drawing in black chalk. Laid down. 345 by 282 mm. (13 5/8 by 11 1/16 in.)
PROVENANCE: In the collection of artist and painter Arnould de Vuez (1644-1720); thence by descent in his family.
EXHIBITED: Antwerp 1905, no.126.
LITERATURE: R.A.d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, Catalogue Raisonné, Brussels 1974, Vol. I, A 199; ill. Vol. III, fig.214
The son of a linen merchant whose family had lived in Antwerp for many generations, Jacob Jordaens began his artistic career working in the studio of Adam van Noort. In 1615, Jordaens enrolled in the Register of the St Luke’s Guild as a waterschilder, or painter in watercolour. In 1634 he worked under the guidance of Rubens on the temporary decorations to celebrate the arrival of Cardinal Infante Ferdinand to Antwerp, and again in 1636 decorating the hunting lodge of Philip IV of Spain. After the death of Rubens in 1640, Jordaens became the leading painter in Antwerp, producing numerous paintings for public, private and ecclesiastical patrons, as well as many designs for tapestries.
1. Conrad van der Bruggen, tapestry after Jordaens’ design, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. |
A prolific draughtsman, Jordaens’ designs for the tapestry series of Odysseus, Alexander the Great and Scenes from Country Life are considered his finest drawings. Unlike Rubens, who preferred to work out his first ideas for tapestry in oil on panel, Jordaens was more traditional in his approach, given his origins as a watercolour painter. At the time of his training, paintings in watercolour on canvas or paper were often used as a cheaper form of wall covering instead of tapestries and Spanish gilded leather. It seems likely that Jordaens may have executed works of this type, though none survive today. Jordaens’ method for working out the genesis of a tapestry design was by executing preparatory drawings, generally sketched in black chalk or pen and brown ink. By the mid 1630s, the artist had also begun to prepare more elaborate modelli, incorporating red, black and white chalk, with watercolour and bodycolour. These highly finished drawings could then be submitted to patrons for approval. It is also likely that some of these drawings were created as independent works of art.
The present sheet belongs to a series of drawings intended as preliminary studies for the tapestry series, Scenes from Country Life. Though R-A d’Hulst originally dated the series to c. 1645, it is now thought the designs belong to the mid 1630s when Jordaens moved away from mythological and religious scenes and produced a number of allegory and genre subjects. This is confirmed by the presence of the architectural borders in Jordaen’s tapestries, which derive from those of Rubens’ series for the Triumph of the Eucharist and the Life of Achilles. As no painted modelli survive
for the tapestry designs and, as the preparatory sketches are so complete, it is probable the cartoons were executed directly from the drawings themselves. Some sketches were probably made for the tapestry series but rejected, whilst others were intended as independent compositions. Comprising rustic subjects and originally designed to be hung in pairs, each scene was intentionally unified by the repetition of decorative emblems so that, when viewed together, the tapestries would personify the fertility and productivity of country life.
In this highly finished watercolour drawing, Jordaens places the figures within an elaborate architectonic border which acts as a large stage through which one can view the central motif. The framework shares some of the motifs of other country life scenes; the column to the left of the picture space is decorated with a satyr whilst the balcony is decorated with serpents coiled around a grapevine. A monkey (lasciviousness) and a dog (affection) play on the ledge below the balcony, and parrots, traditionally a symbol of marital purity and love, watch over the scene. By placing a tapestry over the balcony, Jordaens unites the figural composition with the architectural border. This device is repeated in, “Gentleman Playing the Lute and a Lady with a Feather” (fig.1)1 of c. 1635, a tapestry woven by Conrad van der Bruggen, and belonging to the Country Life series. A further comparative study for Jordaen’s motif for depicting musical companies set within balustrades is A Maid Carrying a Dish, in a Loggia at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Besançon2. Not as highly finished as the present sheet, and generally sketchier in execution, the Besançon drawing shares similarities in the inclusion of the parrot and in the compositional device of the tapestry draped over the balcony. The architectonics, however, are not as distorted as in the present sheet, suggesting that the latter was designed to be viewed from a certain height. In this exploration of powerful spatial illusionism and ornamental richness, the influence of the Italian Master, Veronese, can be seen.
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Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna
Pen and brown ink and wash. One corner made up. 221 by 245mm. (8 3/4 by 9 3/4 in.)
drawings, amongst which the present sheet can be counted, are generally considered to belong to the years Guercino lived in Cento1. In their catalogue of his drawings at Windsor Castle, Sir Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner describe the Genre and Portrait drawings as showing Guercino’s “innate sympathy for the predicament of his fellow human beings ”2. The authors cite Malvasia to describe the artist’s “compassionate and charitable” nature, quoting his description of Guercino walking out of his front door to be surrounded by the poor of his native town. Instead of becoming impatient or angry, Guercino was always respectful, and curious to hear about the daily trials of a more beleaguered section of his community. This interest and sympathy expressed itself in sketches of individuals and scenes from daily life, and showed a cast of labourers, stall holders, servants, beggars, peasants, clergymen and quacks. Many of these studies, both of groups and single figures, have a degree of detachment and some are pure caricature but the present work is one of a small number which seem to qualify as portrait drawings3.
Though scenes of low life had become an established subject matter, as witnessed by the genre works of the Carracci, this group of drawings as a whole may also have acted as a form of entertainment or outlet for an essentially rather down to earth artist. Unlike the Carracci, however, with their butchers and bean-eaters, and despite the great influence they had on his art, Guercino seems never to have allowed his interest in domestic and street life to enter the more rarefied world of his paintings. Though his pictures can be rich in observational detail and sympathetic humanity, there is little sign of the rustic or provincial. In some of the figure and head studies, including the present one and a comparably intense drawing of a man reading, now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard4 there is, nevertheless, an archetypal quality and it is this element which Guercino translates into paint. Thus the present sitter has some parallel with the vulnerable old woman of Guercino’s late painting Samson bringing the Honeycomb to his Parents, now in the de Young Memorial Museum, California5, while the concentration on an inner world seen in the Fogg drawing can be found in many of the saints and philosophers who people the artist’s grand, historical paintings.
The undeniable ugliness of the subject, with his drooping chin and jowls, spiky stubble and overlarge bottom lip is shot through with humanity. Humble and seemingly dejected, this anonymous, ageing man in his unflattering cap retains an extraordinary dignity. It is drawn in an identical manner to a caricature in the British Museum, the Old Man with a Pair of Spectacles over his Ear, considered by Nicholas Turner to date from the mid-1630s6. That drawing depicts another curious figure, a man with flattened nose, bulbous eyes and a jutting lower jaw but by placing the sitter in profile, in mock-heroic mode, Guercino created there a tone of comic acidity quite different to the present work. Here, the dignity which is so fundamental to this depiction is conveyed by the profundity and reserve suggested in the heavily shaded eyes and the luminosity, which is so much a feature of Guercino’s draughtsmanship, here works in two ways. Significant areas of the face and shirt are left empty, bordered by a spare use of the pen. This emptiness creates the impression of a glare, shining upon the sitter with a brutal clarity, but at the same time the light appears to reflect outwards, a function of the intensely soulful nature of the study.
Venice 1727 - 1804 Venice
Pen and brown ink and brown wash over a black chalk underdrawing. Signed Dom.o Tiepolo at lower right. 394 by 264 mm (15 1/2 by 10 3/8 in.)
Giandomenico’s career was inextricably linked with his father’s until the latter’s death, in 1770. Acting as Giambattista’s amanuensis, Giandomenico worked in Venice, in the family villa at Valmarana, and on the grand commissions in Würzburg and Madrid. After 1770, however, and for the following fifteen years or so, he enjoyed his own, similarly high reputation, particularly as a history painter in the grand manner. In the last decade of his working life his output as a painter dwindled, the series of exquisite Punchinellos being his final painted offerings. As a draughstman, however, Giandomenico worked continuously throughout his long life, producing a vast number of drawings, which, collectively, may well be regarded as his most lasting legacy. Executed in pen and wash, the drawings were produced, for the most part, in large series as independent works in their own right. They include a group of over two hundred religious drawings, known as the Large Biblical Series, the Scenes from Contemporary Life, numbering about one hundred sheets, and the celebrated 104 sheets entitled Divertimenti per li Ragazzi. These were drawn towards the end of Giandomenico’s life, and illustrate scenes from the life of Punchinello, the famous and popular character from the Commedia dell’Arte.
This impressive sheet depicts an Allegory of Prudence, one of the four Cardinal Virtues, the others being Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. She is shown as a imposing young woman with two faces, to signify her circumspection, and with her bare breasts showing through the abundant folds of her dress. Seated on clouds, she holds a mirror in her left hand, to symbolize man’s ability to see his true self, and has a snake entwined around her left arm.
This drawing contains all the characteristics of Domenico’s draughstmanship: the shaky and nervous strokes of pen, the beautifully applied brown-orange wash, the brilliant use of areas of the white paper for the highlights, as well as a rather charming clumsiness, noticeable, for example, in the drawing of the figure’s toes. Although this large-scale single figure drawing is unique in the work of Giandomenico, its subject and composition are clearly reminiscent of the work of his father, Giambattista. As George Knox has pointed out, Prudence recurs frequently in the work of the elder artist, who placed her prominently in several projects, such as the 1734 fresco of the Allegory of Fortitude, Temperance, Justice and Truth, in the Villa Loschi, near Vicenza1, and the 1744 canvas of the Allegory of Prudence, Grace and Innocence, in the Scuola dei Carmini, Venice2. It is, however, in works depicting different or unidentified allegories, that Giandomenico seems to have looked for inspiration in this instance. For example, the pose of the figure in this sheet is similar to that of several drawings of allegorical figures in the Musei Civici di Storia ed Arte, Trieste3. As George Knox has pointed out, amongst these, the sheet of an Allegorical Figure 4 provides the best comparison: in both sheets the head of the female figure and her right arm are seen in an almost identical pose. This Allegory of Prudence is also reminiscent of Giambattista’s 1732 frescoes of the Allegories of Justice, Wisdom, Faith, and Charity, painted in the spandrels of the Colleoni Chapel, Bergamo5. There too, the figures are similarly seated on clouds, with ample drapery covering most of the space, and in the Allegory of Faith, the figure’s left hand, holding the Cross, is in the same position as that of Prudence’s left hand, holding the mirror, in the present drawing.
Venice 1727 - 1804 Venice
Pen and brown ink with brown wash over a black chalk underdrawing. Inscribed 167 in black chalk at upper right. Signed Dom.o Tiepolo f in brown ink at lower left. 284 by 407 mm. (11 3/16 by 16 1/16 in.)
Watermark: Initials A / HF
PROVENANCE: Ernst Ehlers, Göttingen; Boerner Sale, Leipzig, 9-10 May 1930, lot 492 (Lugt, 1391), William H. Crocker (1861-1937), Burlingame, California; his son Charles Crocker (1904-1961), San Francisco; thence by descent to the previous owners.
LITERATURE: A.M. Gealt and G. Knox, Giandomenico Tiepolo: Scene di vita quotidiana a Venezia e nella terraferma, Venice, 2005, p. 35 and pp. 110-1, no. 21.
During the last twenty years or so of his life, Giandomenico seems to have been mainly preoccupied with the production of three large series of drawings. The most famous of the sequence is the Punchinello series. Entitled by the artist, Divertimenti per li Regazzi, the group numbered 104 drawings illustrating scenes from the life of the Neapolitan comic character, Punchinello. The drawings were executed around the turn of the century, within a year or two of the artist’s death, and were conceivably Giandomenico’s final substantial work. The primary group in the sequence, named The Large Biblical Series by James Byam Shaw, comprised more than 300 sheets depicting religious subjects taken mainly from the Old and New Testaments, whilst the penultimate group, entitled The Contemporary Life, numbered 89 drawings, all with similar dimensions, of which 24 are dated 1791, and one bears the date 1800. The subject matter of these sheets is wide-ranging: the artist illustrated scenes from the everyday life of peasants to high society, and even exotic animals. In their recent catalogue of the exhibition dedicated to this series, Adelheid Gealt and George Knox divided the drawings into seven main categories, according to their subject matter1.
The present sheet is one of a group of eight drawings included under the heading, Horses and Horsemen2. As Gealt points out, horses have a particularly unique, if marginal, place in the history of Venetian art. Situated in a lagoon and surrounded by islands and marshlands, Venice, perhaps more than any other city, has been defined throughout the history of art by its topography; narrow canals with small islands linked by bridges have provided the raw material for many Venetian painters. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the city has never produced a Venetian equivalent of the famed English equestrian painter, George Stubbs. Venetian artists such as Marco Ricci, Francesco Zuccarelli, Giuseppe Zais, and even Gianantonio Guardi in his Turqueries, have perpetually depicted horses and horsemen surrounded by landscapes. By placing horses and riders in landscapes reminiscent of the Venetian mainland, Giandomenico is unparalleled.
In the present sheet, an almost comical scene unfolds in front of the gate of a walled city, the architecture of which is inspired by the small towns of the Veneto, such as Noale and Cittadella. An elderly gentleman wearing a turban orders his young attendant to catch a bolting horse. Alively dog, with jaw open, barks in the foreground. Thrown from the horse, a pot bellied Punchinello lies dazed in the background. To his left, a young groom, apparently unaware of the dramatic scene unravelling behind him, unsaddles another horse, which grazes peacefully before the walled city. Gealt and Knox have noted that the bolting horse in this sheet recurs in another drawing by Giandomenico of a horse depicted in the same pose, albeit reversed, which was on the New York art market years ago3. Gealt and Knox have also made a comparison between this drawing and another sketch from the same series in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, illustrating a similar composition with, to the right of the sheet, two Oriental figures and a Moor riding a rearing horse, and to the left, a city. The horse and horseman in the latter sketch derive from a further drawing in the Metropolitan Museum, whilst the view of the town is reminiscent of two landscape drawings by Giandomenico Tiepolo’s father, Giambattista4.
Although the purpose of The Contemporary Life remains unknown, it is conceivable that, as suggested by Knox5, the concept of producing a printed version of the series might have been a consideration for Giandomenico. Indeed, six etchings, as well as four of the corresponding preparatory drawings in the series of The Contemporary Life, are known6.
Saint-Nicolas-d’Attez 1823 - 1891 Colombes
Pen and india ink, with grey wash. Signed f.Ribot at lower centre. 300 by 185 mm. ( 11 3/4 by 7 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Cheramy collection, his sale, Paris, 14 April 1913, lot 205; Collection Louis de Launay; Private collection, Paris.
Following the death of his father in 1840, Théodule Ribot was forced to interrupt his studies at the École des Arts et Métiers de Chalons, to take employment as a bookkeeper in Rouen. In 1845, the artist moved to Paris where he undertook various jobs, gilding frames for a mirror manufacturer, decorating window shades and painting trade signs whilst studying in the atelier of Auguste-Barthélémy Glaize. Following a trip to Algeria in 1848, where he found work as a foreman, Ribot returned to Paris and befriended the painter, Bonvin. In 1859, Bonvin invited Ribot, along with his other friends, such as Fantin Latour, Legros, Vollon and Whistler, to exhibit their work in his studio, known as the Atelier Flamand. These artists were united in their opposition to classical and historical themes in French art and by their preference for depicting scenes from ordinary, humble life – an ethos that was to gain them the support of the realist painter, Courbet. Ribot first exhibited at the Salon in 1861, where his “Scenes culinaires”, portraying contemporary life in the kitchens of Parisian restaurants, were well received. Two years later, however, he took the progressive step of signing a petition in protest at the number of rejections by the Salon jury and demonstrated active support for the newly established Salon des Refusés. In 1878, Ribot was named to the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and, in 1884, his fellow artists, including Rodin, Boudin, Monet and Puvis de Chavannes, held a banquet in his honour, awarding him with a medal to which was inscribed: “To Théodule Ribot, the independent painter”.
Ribot discovered inspiration in subjects and scenes taken from contemporary urban life and, though he painted a myriad of subjects including genre, history, still life and portraiture, his most popular series were the “scenes culinaires”. The nineteenth century witnessed a veritable see-change in attitude towards the culinary profession. The trend amongst the affluent middle classes during the Second Empire and Third Republic was essentially to “dine out”. This resulted in greater attention being paid to the art of cooking and, more specifically, to an increased recognition for the cooks themselves – the first “celebrity chef”, Carême, was famed not only for his culinary prowess but also for his lugubrious personality. Ribot acknowledged the burgeoning popularity of cooks as a major visual theme of contemporary life and chose to depict the kitchen process itself – the humble, hard working souls who carried out the chef’s orders and completed the daily tasks.
1. Georges Saivre after Ribot, etching, Le cuisinier sonneur. |
The present sheet depicts an ordinary kitchen cook holding a large, steaming cauldron, the weight of which seems almost to make his legs buckle beneath him. Ribot’s use of India ink with wash, derived from Goya, is masterly; delicate strokes of pen outline the figure, rapid broken brushstrokes indicate the sitter’s face and heavier, thicker brushwork is deployed to suggest the figure of the model and the table and jug before him. With these contrasts in the play of line, Ribot introduces a sense of immediacy and energy to the scene. The artist often drew by lamplight, using strong chiaroscuro as a means by which to convey the psychology of the model. Here, light falls from the upper left of the picture plane. Attention is drawn to the face of the subject, upturned to the light, and thus illuminated by it, then to his hand – an expressive technique that Ribot frequently emphasized in many of his drawings.
Whilst noting the stunning quality of this sheet, Dr. Gabriel Weisberg has also pointed out that it relates to a series of etchings of similar compositions and same format, executed by Georges Saivre after Ribot’s drawings between 1865 and 1871, and exhibited in Paris in 18871. The entire series is published in Dr Weisberg’s exhibition catalogue of 1971, entitled Etching Renaissance in France, 1850-18802. Weisberg further observed that the figure in the present sheet is particularly similar to that in the last etching of the series, entitled Le Cuisinier Sonneur (fig 1).
Paris 1803 - 1860 Fontainebleau
Black and red chalk, with touches of stumping, heightened with white. Signed with monogram DC at lower right.
220 by 300 mm (8 3/4 by 11 3/4 in.)
Born in 1803, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps spent his formative years in Picardie, with his brother, the art critic and essayist, Maurice-Alexandre (1804 -1852). In 1816, Decamps entered the studio of Etienne Bouhot, before moving two years later to the atelier of Alexandre-Denis Abel de Pujol. An inattentive student, Decamps became increasingly disillusioned with the methods of teaching as dictated by the academic doctrine of the day. In 1820, Decamps quit the studio to embark upon a career as an independent artist. It was during a trip to Switzerland in 1824, that Decamps first began to observe landscape directly from nature. In these sketches, most specifically, of Swiss peasants, the minute detail in the rendering of the garments pre-empted the exactitude for which he became so well known, and which prompted the critic Paul Mantz to surmise that Decamps’ genius lay in his rejection of the ideal in favour of a perpetual quest for the truth. Following further travels to the South of France, Italy and, most significantly, to the Middle East, Decamps returned to the environs of Paris, where he remained for much of the rest of his life.
This drawing is a particularly stunning and fresh example of the artists work. A wooden waterside residence, the shape of which derives from the dome-like tents of the Ottoman era, stands reflected in a duck pond. A triumvirate of Turkish figures converse, silhouetted against a sky of sketchy minarets, whilst in the foreground an elderly Turk walks slowly with a stick, accompanied by a laden ass. The elderly man is drawn with a characteristically large turbaned head – a device that Decamps repeated frequently in other works in an attempt to convey a more exotic figural type. Bold rapid strokes of black and red chalk create texture on the papers’ surface, whilst stumping evokes a roughness and intense realism to the scene. The diffused light, achieved by the powerful contrasts of thick black chalk with tints of white, is reminiscent of the work of Chardin and Rembrandt, and serves to add depth and three dimensionality to the pictorial space. As Mosby has commented, in his later works, Decamps placed the “Turkish elements” within a French landscape. By so doing, Decamps was, on the one hand, responding to the French taste for depictions of landscape; on the other, he successfully managed to push the realistic presentation of the Orient a step further. In this early work, however, the scene is drawn with such intensity and truth to nature that it could well be an actual view. As noted by Gruyer, “Many other painters, after him, have specialized in oriental scenes: no other has matched the power and depth with which he rendered the aspects, costumes and types”1.
No painted composition has been identified for which this drawing could have served as a preparatory study. However, the architecture of the wooden waterside hut recurs as a motif in a number of Oriental views of the 1830s. One such example is an oil on canvas entitled “Paysage Turc”, dated 1832, and now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly2
Lyon 1824 - 1898 Paris
Pencil, with stumping, on light blue paper. Inscribed a mademoiselle Ernestine/X bre 62, and signed P. Puvis de Chavannes in black chalk at the lower right. 212 by 134 mm. (8 by 5 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Private collection, France
Puvis de Chavannes had originally intended to study engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lyon. However, illness interrupted his studies and, following a sojourn in Italy, the young man returned to France in 1847 full of fresh ideas and determined to adopt art as a profession. That same year, he entered the studio of Henry Scheffer, then Delacroix and Couture. It was not until the Salon of 1861 where he exhibited two large wall paintings, Bellum (War) and, Concordia (Peace), that Puvis achieved public recognition. Eventually acquired by the state, these two monumental works represented the turning point in his career. In 1874, under the initiative of the newly appointed Director of the Beaux Arts, the artist was commissioned to adorn the Pantheon in Paris with a great mural ensemble depicting the life of Sainte Geneviève. Thereafter, Puvis became the leading French painter of large-scale decorative cycles in public buildings.
1. P. P. de Chavannes, Sainte Geneviève, fresco, Pantheon, Paris. |
In this highly finished study, Puvis renders reality by simplifying it and stripping it of what is inessential and purely anecdotal. The simplicity of pose, with head, shoulders and arms following a lucent arc, and the clarity of the composition, reflect the classical restraint and purity of line of the early Italian Masters such as Massaccio and Piero della Francesco. In the modelling of the two figures, Puvis explores the full expressive effects of chiaroscuro; a myriad of shades of grey create a palpable sense of three dimensionality, whilst touches of brilliant velvety black contrast with the pale silvery blue paper. Puvis’s economy of means was intended to present his ideas with maximum clarity, but here it has the opposite effect; by conveying, with such restraint, the innocence and fragility of the child slumbering in his elder sister’s tender and protective arms, Puvis serves to heighten the emotional intensity of the scene. It was precisely this ambiguity present in his work that so greatly influenced that of Gauguin and Picasso.
The drawing is believed to relate to a painting, now lost, but recorded in the Oscar Ghez collection, The Big Sister, and seen by Madame d’Argencourt around 1975 in the Musée du Petit Palais, in Geneva. The same figural composition recurs in the first mural cycle depicting the life of Sainte Geneviève, executed by Puvis for the Pantheon in 1877 (fig.1). In the panel to the right, illustrating the childhood of Sainte Geneviève, a young beggar girl stands in the foreground, holding a child. Though in the Pantheon version, the child’s face is turned towards the viewer, and the rendering of the figures is simplified - in part due to the fresco technique - the pose of the sister, with head downcast, is strikingly similar to the present sheet.
As Bertrand Puvis de Chavanne has kindly pointed out, the inscription at the bottom right of the drawing refers to Puvis’ niece, Ernestine, suggesting that the drawing may either have been sketched as a gift for his niece, or that she may have, in fact, served as the model for the figure of the big sister.
Brussels 1823 - 1906 Paris
Watercolour. Signed A Stevens at lower right. 271 by 185 mm. (10 11/16 by 7 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Paris.
The son of an avid art collector, and the grandson of the owner of the Café de l’Amitié in the Place Royale – the meeting place for the leading artists of the day – Alfred Stevens grew up engulfed by an atmosphere that embraced the arts. At the age of seventeen, the young artist joined the studio of the neo-classical painter François Joseph Navez (1787-1869), a pupil of Jacques Louis David. He remained in the atelier of the pre-eminent Belgian painter until 1844 when, invited by the Romantic painter and friend of the family, Camille Roqueplan, Stevens travelled to Paris to complete his studies. During this first stay he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, receiving tuition from Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Following the death of his grandmother in 1849, Stevens returned briefly to Brussels, but was back in Paris by 1852, where he was to remain for the rest of his career. His first known works date from 1848, and are characterized by a romantic palette, inherited from Roqueplan. Stevens exhibited regularly at the Salons in Paris and Brussels, and at the Exposition Universelle, where he was awarded the Grand Prix for two consecutive years, in 1889 and 1900. The monumental work for which he was granted the Grand Prix in 1889 was executed in collaboration with a former pupil, Henri Gervex, together with a team of assistants. This large canvas, the Panorama of the Century, recorded the great men and women of the nineteenth century. It was housed in a pavilion in the Jardins des Tuileries and attracted so many visitors that it became one of the most fashionable sights of the city. A member of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, and the Académie Royale de Belgique, Stevens enjoyed a prosperous and successful career as a portrait and landscape painter, counting as clients, King Léopold of Belgium, the Musée des Beaux Arts, and great American collectors such as the Vanderbilts. According to Emmanuel Charles Benezit, author of the renowned Dictionary of Painters, Alfred Stevens became the first living artist to be bestowed with the honour of a solo retrospective exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and “Il remit la peinture, alors encore égarée dans des bergeries et des scènes de genres, sur la voie du beau métier et de la grandeur”1.
In the intensely evocative central scene of this watercolour, Stevens depicts a young lady leaning against a table, absorbed in reading a letter. Her slim, elegant figure is defined beneath the swathes of her white dress with supple, fluid brushstrokes; her image is one of grace and beauty. Though the viewer cannot possibly know what news the letter holds, the sitter’s pose, with head turned from the viewer, is one of intimate reflection, inviting a retrospect on the regret of what has been loved and lost, and the memories of what may never come again. The flat surfaces of the marine scenes that surround her are overlapped to suggest the illusion of depth, whilst rich, golden brown and silvery grey hues elicit a strong sense of harmony and serve to unify the myriad scenes. Here, the drawing is like a novel; surface and space evoke an open meaning through careful observation and subtle gesture.
The expressive motif of “the letter” was a frequent and successful theme in the artist’s paintings. Throughout his career, Stevens exploited the full dramatic effects – intrigue, condolence, memories or regrets – the receipt of a letter could imply. From 1880, Stevens made regular trips to the Normandy coast for the sake of his health; he suffered from a bronchial condition allegedly caused by breathing turpentine fumes. During these sojourns, the artist turned his attention to marine and landscape painting, the spontaneity of which demonstrated the influence of the vibrant seascapes of Corot. The presence of the seven rapid plein air sketches of the sea and shore under clouds and clear skies in this trompe-l’oeil watercolour would suggest that this sheet is datable to the early 1880s.
Indeed, on the basis of first hand inspection, Christiane Lefèbvre dates the present watercolour to around 1884, which will be included in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Alfred Stevens2.
Gorritz 1845 - 1916 Paris
Watercolour with touches of pastel and gouache 42 by 64 cm (16 1/2 by 25 1/4 in.)
Born in Austria to French parents, Luigi Loir enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Parma to study painting. In 1863 he moved to Paris where he trained in the atelier of Jean Pastelot. Pastelot concentrated not only on flowers and genre paintings in gouache and watercolour but also worked with the popular caricature journals of the time, and it was here that Loir was first introduced to the practice of observing and capturing figural qualities in a naturalistic manner. In 1865, Loir debuted at the Paris Salon with a landscape painting entitled Villiers-sur-Seine and, from this point on, he simultaneously produced scenes of the Parisian cityscape and its surrounds whilst continuing his mural work, most notably for the interior and ceilings of the Château du Diable in 1866. It was not until after the campaign of 1870, in which he was to distinguish himself in the Battle of Bourget, that Loir turned away from decorative painting to concentrate exclusively on landscapes and urban views of Paris. Loir’s awards were numerous, culminating in 1889 with a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. During his lifetime his works were purchased by many prestigious museums and individuals – in 1882, the St Louis Museum of Art purchased Le Pont d’Austerlitz and in 1893 the State purchased Avant l’Embarquement. Loir was also recognised as an accomplished graphic artist, using the newly invented chromolithography technique which allowed for large scale, coloured images to be widely reproduced. Towards the end of his life, Loir abandoned the precise details of his earlier works in favour of the subdued tones of Whistler and his followers.
Loir’s interest in the Parisian street scene was most probably influenced by the transmogrification of Paris brought about by the work of Baron Georges Hausmann, whose urban designs metamorphosized the city from a labyrinthine network of medieval streets to an ordered system of grand avenues. By taking to the streets in search of inspiration, and by studying its inhabitants, Loir’s scenes not only celebrated but provided a permanent record of the industrial and engineering achievements which formed contemporary Paris. Though not the only recorder of the Parisian urban cityscape – Jean Béraud also recognized the importance of representing contemporary Parisian life – Loir was unique in the impressionistic interpretation of the scene and in the dedicated studies of the continuously changing effects of light on the environment. He recognized that, viewed in the morning, at noon and at twilight, the same scene was actually three different realities.
The present sheet depicts a view of the Seine at dusk. Loir captures with perfection the mysterious mist – suffused atmosphere of a winters’ evening. The modulated hues and subdued tones in the rendering of the bridge and foreground are offset against the eventide sky – itself a thin veil of light grey-blue shot through with the evanescent rosepinks and yellows of the setting sun, glimmering against the rivers reflective surface. The glow-worm lamps above the bridge are transformed into glittery sparks, sprayed across the horizon, whilst smoky tissues of feathered branches draw the viewer’s eye into the picture plane. This soft edged realism, characteristic of Loir’s later style, recalls the atmospheric dissolution of sky and water developed by Whistler in his sequence of Nocturnes.
Stockhom 1853 - 1919 Falun
Charcoal and coloured pastel. Signed with the artist’s monogram at centre right and inscribed Till vännen Thorsten Laurin av vännen C.L. (To (my) friend Thorsten Laurin from (his) friend C. L.) 845 by 590 mm (33 1/4 by 23 1/4 in.)
EXHIBITED: Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Minnesutställning Carl Larsson, Retrospective, 1920, No 120; Svenska Konstutställningen i Hamburg, Lübeck och Berlin, Exhibition in Hamburg, Lubeck and Berlin, 1926, No. 349; Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Minnesutställning Carl Larsson, Retrospective, 1953, No. 397.
LITERATURE: Axel Gauffin,Konstverk och människor, 1915, p. 16, Illustrated; Vängåvan till Hjalmar Söderbergs 50-årsdag 1919, p. 137; Georg Nordensvan, Carl Larsso, 1921, Part II, p.88, Illustrated; Ord och Bild, 1922, p. 229; Carl G. Laurin, Nordisk Konst, 1926, IV, p. 67; Ragnar Hoppe, Katalog over Thorsten Laurins samling av maleri och skulptur, 1936, No. 131, p. 66; Ulwa Nergaard, Carl Larsson. Signerat med pensel och penn 1999, Cat. No. 800, Part II, p. 69, Illustrated, Part I, p.219.
1. C. Larsson, Fama, fresco, the Royal Opera House, Stockholm. |
A multifaceted and versatile artist, Carl Larsson was not only a gifted watercolourist, but also a talented illustrator and portrait painter, a skilful graphic artist, and an original muralist who was influenced by pre-Raphaelitism, Art Nouveau, arts of the Gustavian period and Japonisme. Known in his native Sweden as the “sunny artist”, this perception was ultimately altered after the appearance of his memoirs Jag (I Myself) where it was discovered that he was, conversely, a very complicated man, often depressed and full of desolation.
From an impoverished childhood, at the age of thirteen, Larsson was accepted into the principskola of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. By all accounts, an exceptionally shy child, Larsson spent his first years feeling socially inferior and confused. It was not until 1869, when he was promoted to the “antique school” that he began to gain in confidence, becoming a central figure in the student life of the academy. From 1871 to 1878, he contributed illustrations to the comic journal Kaspar and to the newspaper Ny illustrerad tidning. Larsson eschewed the colour experimentation of Impressionism and its dissolution of contours in favour of detailed realism. Thus, it is not surprising that, when he moved to Paris in 1877, he quickly became disillusioned and, according to his memoirs, suffered thoughts of despair and suicide. In 1882, following two summers at Barbizon, the refuge of the plein-air painters, Larsson, under the influence of the landscape painter Karl Nordström, chose to settle at the international artists’ colony at Grèz-sur-Loing, near the Forest of Fontainebleau. By painting outdoors with watercolour, he was able to capture instantaneously the authentic everyday realities of life; his buoyant, shimmering watercolours of this period demonstrated a masterly ability to depict a glittering splash of water and its plethora of reflection. With these exquisite watercolours he not only drew the attention of patrons in both France and Sweden, but also exhibited at the Salon in Paris. Larsson returned to Sweden in 1885, where he remained for the rest of his life. Whilst
working as an art teacher in Gothenburg he met Pontus Fürstenberg, an affluent wholesaler who became his patron, and from whom he received a number of commissions for large scale murals. Larsson had always aspired to be a monumental painter, and he considered these to be his most important contributions to art. His most famous assignments included the decorations for the stairwell of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, comprising six panels depicting events from Swedish art history, painted and installed in 1896, and the Foyers of the Stockholm Opera and Dramatic Theatre (1896-1908). The artist also undertook smaller commissions for private houses, schools and public buildings in Gothenburg and continued to provide drawings for book illustrations. His popularity increased further with the development of colour reproduction technology, when, in the 1890s, the Swedish publisher, Bonnier, published books written and illustrated by the artist.
This spectacularly bold drawing belongs to a large group of drawings intended as preliminary sketches executed by the artist in his studio, in preparation for one of Larsson’s most important commissions, the magnificent frescoes for the ceiling of the Royal Opera House Foyer, completed in December 1897, and unveiled to the public in the autumn of 1898. The predominant scene of this sensational project depicts Fama, the goddess of Fame, derived from the Greek goddess Pheme. She is surrounded by delightfully playful putti holding the Union flag, a symbol of the alliance of Sweden and Norway (fig.1). As has been suggested by Anna Ryman1, in the six lunettes and two roundels surrounding the central scene, Larsson chose to illustrate various operatic themes – Folkvisan (the Folk song), and Medeltidsmysteriet (the medieval mystery) – as well as portraits of artists of the Gustavian Opera of the eighteenth century – Petter Stenborg and Elisabet Olin – and the famous Swedish opera singer of the nineteenth century, Jenny Lind, depicted as Norma.
A highly finished work in its own right, the existence of pentimenti in the position of the feet and faint sketches of other legs suggest the present, sensuously modelled sheet was indeed a life study. Various related drawings exist to illustrate Larsson’s artistic process: a fine study in the Göteborgs Konstmuseum2 shows a life model sitting at rest on a table beside two cloth dummies, four studies in various media now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm show the model lying extended3; in another sheet the head and torso of the model are studied now with a trumpet at her lips while separate studies analyse the hands and arms holding a trumpet and a laurel wreath as the figure does in the fresco4; one further drawing in the Nationalmuseum develops the position of the figure’s legs and, studies the flow of the drapery5. The closest drawing to the final figure of Fame in the ceiling of the Royal Opera House is a sheet, also in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, which shows the whole figure in an almost identical pose to that of the figure in the fresco6.
As with his work for other major decorative projects, Larsson can be seen to have reworked the subject several times before arriving at the final, aesthetically satisfying composition. In the process, he clearly liked the present drawing enough to dedicate it to his friend and patron Thorsten Laurin. An enthusiastic patron of the arts in Sweden, when the catalogue of Laurin’s collection was first published in 1936, it aroused exceptional interest, not only for its size (465 items), but for its inclusion of works by the various Swedish schools, in particular, the work of Ernst Josephson, Gustav Rydberg, Anders Zorn and of course, Larsson7, as well as examples of French, Scandinavian and Ancient art. Larsson is known to have painted several portraits of the Laurin family.
Paris 1863 - 1935
Watercolour, pen and brown ink over a pencil underdrawing. Signed with intertwined initials PS, at lower left. 210 by 280 mm (8 1/4 by 11 in.)
Born in 1863 into an affluent bourgeois family of saddlers for whom Napoleon III was a client, Paul Signac had no formal artistic training. He was primarily motivated to paint by seeing the landscapes of the Impressionists, and especially by the work of Claude Monet, whose paintings he first saw at the exhibition held in the offices of La Vie Moderne in June 1880. It was his meeting with Georges Seurat at the 1884 Salon des Indépendents, and, through him, with Camille Pissarro, that changed the course of his career. Signac and Seurat met regularly; both painters shared an admiration for the work of Delacroix, and they studied Charles Blanc’s Grammaire des arts et du dessin, as well as the optical treatises of David Sutter and Ogden Rood. Signac quickly adopted the divisionist technique, developed by Seurat, of scientifically juxtaposed small dots of pure colour, intended to combine and blend not on the canvas but in the viewer’s eye. Though famed for his paintings and drawings, Signac was also a successful designer and critic.
Aside from a few gouache studies of c. 1885 for Les Modistes and an 1890 Portrait of Luce Reading Jean Graves’s Anarchist Publication La Révolte, Signac for a long time drew in black and white, reserving colour for his oil paintings. In a letter dated 30 August 1888, Pissarro urged Signac to try watercolour1. Signac, however, did not immediately take his advice. An enthusiastic sailor, it was not until 1892, on a sailing trip to the port of St Tropez, that he first tackled the medium of watercolour. As documented in a letter to Pissarro 2, his initial attempts were unsuccessful but he soon found it an ideal way of capturing the fleeting effects of the coastal Mediterranean panorama. It was at the same time that Signac began to realize the impossibility of executing fullscale oil paintings outdoors; his watercolours were thus to become a crucial means of “documentation” for canvases whose compositions he then completed in the studio. Signac soon began to show his watercolours as works of art in their own right and, from 1893 onwards, he exhibited works that he described as “watercolour notations” alongside his oils. Indeed, the value that he placed on his watercolours is demonstrated by his outrage when told, in 1900, that the Vienna Secession did not permit the display of watercolours. From 1910 onwards, watercolour assumed an even greater role in Signac’s oeuvre.
1. Paul Signac, Le port de Saint Tropez, watercolour, Art Market, Paris, 2007. |
The present sheet is a delightful example of Signac’s early experimentation with the medium of watercolour. With a palette of warm red/orange hues infused with purple and touches of bright cobalt blue, Signac captures the clarity of colour and incandescent light of the Mediterranean landscape that so intoxicated him. The curvilinear rowing boat, the sinewy, winding pine tree and the undulating coastline are all outlined with broad, unfettered brushstrokes, the curves of which create rhythmical movements thus giving each area of the picture plane directional momentum, a technique reminiscent of the drawings of Van Gogh, whom Signac had known well. The subject of the umbrella pine, common to the region of St Tropez, recurs in a number of Signac’s sketches of St Tropez, for example Saint Tropez, vu de Bois-de-Pins of 18953.
In the mid 1890s, Signac spent a short period of just a few years reworking sheets with ink drawing over the watercolour4. As the present sheet is rendered in the medium of ink and watercolour, it is likely that the drawing belongs to this period of experimentation.
This watercolour is comparable to a further study recently on the art market5. Depicting the same composition, the latter is a quick sketch and probably served only as a reference note for the present, more highly finished sheet.
Bordeaux 1885 - 1962 Paris
Watercolour. Signed A.Lhote in pencil at upper right. 217 by 142 mm (8 1/2 by 5 1/2 in.)
At just thirteen years of age, André Lhote embarked upon his artistic career, apprenticed to a local sculpture studio as a woodcarver, before attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, where he studied decorative arts. In 1906, inspired by primitive African sculpture and by the work of Paul Gauguin, Lhote turned to painting. In their rhythmic but vigorous brushstrokes, simplification of shape and intensity of colour, these early works were a complex digestion of Fauvism and of the work of Cezanne, whose retrospective in the Salon d’Automne of 1907 had evinced a profound effect on the impressionable young artist. During this time, Lhote made acquaintance with a number of French writers and critics, such as Henri Fournier, Jacques Rivière, and Joseph Granie - it was Granie who, in 1909, secured a year’s scholarship for Lhote at the Villa Medicis Libre, an academic programme for non-married artists. In this dynamic and forward-thinking artistic environment, Lhote met Raoul Dufy, who in turn proved instrumental in introducing him to the more progressive artists and poets of the day such as Robert Delaunay, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Albert Gleizes. In 1910, Lhote held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Druet, in Paris. His work was met with critical acclaim and he instantly won the full support of the highly influential critics André Salmon and Guillaime Apollinaire. His position in the Parisian art world was thus established. A year later, Lhote participated in the Salon des Indépendants. His work was exhibited next door to the infamous Salle 41, where the seminal images of Cubism were first unveiled. After learning the extent of their common interests, Lhote and these artists quickly became friends. Their alliance was cemented in the Salon d’Automne of the same year, where paintings by Gleizes, Leger, Metzinger and Duchamps were shown alongside Lhote’s Port de Bordeaux. In 1912, Lhote joined the ironically titled Section d’Or and his collaboration with such radical protagonists as Kupka and Archipenko saw the concepts of Cubism pushed to new limits of complete abstraction. Given the epithet the academician of Cubism by Robert Rosenblum, Lhote became a perpetual exponent of Synthetic or “Soft” Cubism both in his erudite literary works on the role of painting in modern society, and in his demonstrative and evocative paintings. He regularly expounded his critical and aesthetic considerations in the journal, Nouvelle Revue Francaise of which he was a cofounder, and he remained an enthusiastic defender of Modernism throughout his life, causing quite a scandal, in 1935, by giving a lecture entitled “Is it necessary to burn down the Louvre?”.
A talented painter and outspoken critic, Lhote was also a dedicated teacher. In 1922 he opened the Académie Montparnasse, thus providing a vehicle in which to disseminate his style and technique to many young artists, the most notable of which being the soft cubist art deco painter, Tamara de Lempicka. In 1955, Lhote’s work was awarded the Grand Prix National de Peinture. He was also bestowed with the honour of “President of the International Association of Painters, Engravers and Sculptors” by the UNESCO commission.
The present watercolour expresses a complex symbiosis of Cubist and Synthetic Cubist concepts. In the Cubist tradition, Lhote has reduced the landscape to a series of interacting planes and semi-geometrical forms. The palette, of subdued greys, blues and browns accented with bright greens and blood red prefigures the kaleidoscopic colour of Synthetic Cubism, whilst the composition, arranged frontally with shapes modelled in an illusion of projecting volumes, serves to create an undeniable sense of density, movement and vitality. The savage slashing strokes of the brush create a primeval, direct expression, inspired by the work of Gauguin.
Tiraspol, Moldavia 1881 - 1964 Fontenay-aux-Roses
Pastel and gouache. Signed with the artist’s monogram at lower right. 180 by 100 mm (7 1/16 by 3 9/16 in.)
A seminal protagonist of Russian modernism, Mikhail Larionov enrolled as a student of painting at the College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow in 1898. His independence was quickly demonstrated by his rare attendance of classes, as he preferred to work in his own studio, without the interference of direction. Aspirited student and one keen to pursue a stylistically independent path, he submitted so many works for the 1902 student exhibition that he was expelled from the college. By 1906, he had actively begun to promote his career as an artist, and exhibited widely. In late 1910, whilst completing military service, Larionov helped found the “Jack of Diamonds” group, an alternative exhibition society for young artists who objected to the policies of the established artistic groups. At their September exhibition, Larionov scandalized the Russian public with two works, Soldiers and Street in a Province. Whilst in its ambiguous spatial relationships, the former aspired towards the primitivism of Gauguin and Rousseau, the latter, in the coarse and emphatic brushwork, crudely attenuated shapes and flattened picture space, recalled Fauvism. In the 1913 exhibition called “The Target” the first group of Rayonist works were shown. Essentially an offshoot of Cubism, Rayonist works were also related to Italian Futurism in their emphasis on dynamic, linear light rays. Although Larionov produced only a few Rayonist paintings, his ideas, involving an art that was a synthesis of Cubism, Futurism, and Orphism were of great significance for their influence on Malevich and the development of Suprematism.
In this arresting watercolour, Larionov has created a rhythmic arrangement of line and colour on a flat plane. The actual shapes visible are largely determined by the internal dynamics of the artist’s material and his process. In the richness of palette – bold blues, deep orange and stark yellows – this watercolour is essentially Fauvist, a work of the “wild beasts”. What makes it revolutionary, however, is its genius of omission. By reducing the palette, Larionov has made colour an independent structural element. Then, by repeating limited hues in a perfectly calculated arrangement, he harmonizes the relation of each element with the rest of the picture thus creating a formula of brilliantly coloured objects with only the most tenuous roots in naturalistic observation.
1. Paul Signac, Le port de Saint Tropez, watercolour, Art Market, Paris, 2007. |
The present sheet is comparable to another pastel, L’arbre bleu, dated 1910, recently on the art market(fig.1)1. Though dissimilar in palette, the strikingly identical composition would suggest that the present sheet is datable to the same period 2.
Lawton, Pennsylvania 1898 - 1976 New York
Gouache.
195 by 265 mm (7 5/8 by 10 5/16 in.)
PROVENANCE: Galerie Maeght until 1989; Collection L. Darinot.
LITERATURE: Calder Foundation; Application No: A230611
The son and grandson of sculptors, Alexander Calder graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1919. He was gradually drawn into the field of art, primarily as an illustrator. His first sketches were published in 1926 in the book, Animal Sketching, and depicted animals in motion drawn in pen and ink, taken from life studies made at the Bronx and Central Park. In the same year, Calder travelled to Paris, where he beguiled avant-garde artists and writers with Circus, a fully developed, mechanized environment; his early drawings and wire constructions demonstrated innovative technical ingenuity and playful wit, exemplified in the 1928 pen drawing, Romulus and Remus. In 1930, influenced by Mondrian and by the Constructivists, in particular the work of Gabo, Calder began to experiment with abstract painting and, more specifically, with abstract wire constructions in which he demonstrated an immediate mastery of constructed space sculpture. The early abstract paintings had a predominantly austere, geometric form, although the indication of subject – constellations, universes – was rarely omitted. Throughout the 1930s Calder created motorized mobiles, both as reliefs, with the movable components on a plane of wooden boards or within a rectangular frame, and freestanding, with facets moving in three-dimensional space. His first group of hand and motor mobiles was shown in 1932 at the Galerie Vignon, where they were so called by Marcel Duchamp. When Arp overheard the name mobile he asked, “What were those things you did last year – stabiles?”. Therein was created the word now used to describe any sculpture that does not move.
Post war, Calder developed a growing interest in the construction of monumental forms capable of encompassing and defining large areas of architectural space. Since the mobile, powered by currents of air, could function better in an exterior environment than an interior space, Calder began to explore the possibilities of outdoor mobiles. This led to the creation of large, standing mobile units rotating in limited movement over a generally pyramidal base, such as the majestic Spiral of 1958 at Unesco, Paris. Calder moved into the 1960s with unabated energy and invention, incorporating into his work the Minimalist conception of colossal, environmental scale with baffling, contradictory effects of elegance and lightness, embodied in La Grand Vitesse, of 1969, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Throughout his long and productive career, Calder produced countless gouaches and lithographs. Created as independent works of art, these are mostly executed on large sheets measuring over a metre (75 x 110 cms). The present gouache, executed in the early 1970s, during the final decade of the artist’s life, is one of the rare works on paper of smaller dimensions. Here, the reduced size of the composition renders the mise en page especially successful. With thick, bold brushstrokes of black gouache, Calder creates a graceful and naturalistic free-form curlicue, interrupted by splashes of red gouache, seemingly floating in mid-air. The structure and balance of the composition reflect the delicately poised designs created by Calder in the wind mobiles of the 1930s, whilst the biomorphic shapes and the simplicity of the composition recall the Neo-plastic forms of his wood mobiles, for example, the oil on wood, Orange Panel of 1943. The restrained palette of primary colours – black juxtaposed with red – create a powerful combination of dramatic intensity and aesthetic clarity. Calder used primary colours throughout his career, for his mobiles, stabiles and works on paper, firmly believing that, “The secondary colors and intermediate shades serve only to confuse and muddle...distinctness and clarity”.
Venice 1518 - 1594 Venice
Oil on canvas.
61.5 by 51 cm. (24 1/4 by 20 1/4 in.)
PROVENANCE: Thomas Agnew and Sons (bears label on back of frame)1; in an English Private Collection since before 1880, from which, sale, London, Sotheby’s, 12 December 1973, lot 75 (The Property of a Gentleman), sold to De Botton; sale, London, Sotheby’s, 23 June 1982, lot 56 (The Property of a Gentleman), probably acquired by Dr Gustav Rau; his posthumous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 9 July 2008, lot 71.
Tintoretto2 not Veronese replaced Titian in the early 1550s as the official portraitist to the Venetian State and though his reputation in this field became muddied in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his contemporary fame was celebrated: “ritrattista d’eterna fama” he was called by the Milanese artist Gian Paolo Lomazzo3. Titian’s influence was a clearly profound one in terms of Tintoretto’s style as a portrait painter but also because he provided an example of success to this ambitious rival, and of the manner in which portrait painting could enhance an artist’s career. Though Tintoretto explored many different formats for his portraits, in a career spanning more than fifty years, there came to be a quintessential version which was described thus in the catalogue of the recent monographic exhibition in Madrid: “a half or three-quarter length against a neutral background, generally grey or brown.. Rather than colour or form, the dominant stylistic feature is the light… It bathes the face, infusing immediacy and capturing the viewer’s attention... The face, and particularly the gaze, carries the entire emotional and intellectual burden of the portrait ... his portraits generally exhibit an extraordinary compositional and chromatic austerity”4. Tintoretto’s success in this field was at least in part due to his famous speed of execution which was greatly in contrast to the dilatory Titian who towards the mid-1560s seems to have abandoned the form. In stark contrast, by the 1560s also, it appears that hundreds of official portraits of varying quality had already poured from Tintoretto’s workshop. Gratifying though this speed was to eager patrons, as well as making sittings undemanding, through the centuries the quantity of surviving works and the lack of distinction made between autograph and workshop paintings accounted for the artist’s subsequent fall from grace. It is necessary therefore to maintain high expectations in looking at Tintoretto as a portraitist, to look for the “naked and concentrated intensity” and “radical simplicity” which characterises his best work, for as pointed out in the Madrid catalogue it is these qualities which meant that Tintoretto’s real heirs where not his Venetian followers but Rubens and then Velasquez5.
The most remarkable quality of this forcefully characterised work is one of animation. It is an utterly spare depiction and one of great stillness and simplicity, and yet the paintwork is so lively it seems almost to move: the eyes glisten, the eyebrows bristle and the silky beard undulates, sending out tendrils onto the impassive black surface of the sitter’s coat. There is nothing in the picture to aid identification; no inscription, no trappings of office, no hands, no detail in either the background or the costume yet the presence of the figure is entirely individual, as if Tintoretto has played with anonymity merely to intensify focus on the person. The painting would seem to have been executed with a speed typical of the artist but the depiction suggests a thorough and respectful understanding of the sitter’s nature. Light glows onto the forehead and beard, making the contrast with the sombre background all the more intense and by picking out in white the lively spikes of hair, the spark in the irises and the crow’s feet or laughter lines around the eyes, Tintoretto suggests his sitter’s intelligence, humour, self-knowledge and vigour.
The excellence of this supremely confident painting links the work with Tintoretto’s famous portraits of the 1570s and 1580s: that of the elderly fellow artist Vincenzo Zeno in the Pitti Gallery, Florence, the portrait of Alessandro Contarini in the Accademia in Venice, those of Marco Grimani and the Old Man with a Fur Collar in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and the study of Vincenzo Morozoni in the National Gallery, London. There is also the slightly earlier portrait of an Unidentified Man in the Metropolitan Museum, New York6. As here, these paintings all depend upon bravura brushwork to lend vitality to what are powerful and sympathetic depictions of officials and figures of artistic and civic standing. Though various writers on Tintoretto have harked upon the artist’s relatively humble status in comparison with the majority of his patrons, finding some tension in the relations between the cittadino and his patrician sitters7, what we actually see are very level, sympathetic and revealing depictions of men of a certain age, many of whom would have been the artist’s direct contemporaries. Given its parity with the paintings listed above, that the present work has so far escaped publication can only be explained by the fact that, as Professor Rearick pointed out, no definitive survey rounding up all the portraits attributed to Tintoretto and his workshop has yet been carried out8. Even recent publications have tended to continue examining this aspect of his career through the work of the specialist Paola Rossi published in 1974. This picture is, in fact, an exceptional illustration of Tintoretto’s profound skill as a portraitist and though it might usually be considered that the influential aspects of his art were colour and dynamic composition, it is easily imaginable that the vibrant paintwork in a picture of this kind would have greatly impressed the artists visiting Venice such as Rubens; as Professor Rearick remarked: “It never ceases to astonish that such depth of expression can be conjured out of such minimal materials”9.
Florence c. 1535 - 1592 Florence
Oil on panel
57 by 42 cm. (22 7/16 by 16 9/16 in.)
PROVENANCE: South German private collection.
In his biography of Girolamo Macchietti, Raffaello Borghini tells how, in 1545, at the young age of ten, the artist entered the studio of Michele Tosini, and remained in the master’s bottega for many years1. Macchietti’s training probably ended in 1555, when he enrolled with Giorgio Vasari, to spend the following four years working on the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio as one of Vasari’s assistants in the painting of the frescoes, and as a designer of the cartoons for a series of tapestries. In 1560, Macchietti travelled to Urbino, where he made use of his recent Florentine experience to fresco the Palazzo degli Albanini (now destroyed), with battle-scenes and grottesche. Around 1560- 61, attracted by Michelangelo, Raphael, the antiquities, and possibly by the jubilee called by Pope Pius IV, the artist moved to Rome. Despite his relatively long stay of about two years in the city, no works from this period of the artist’s career have survived. It seems conceivable, however, that beyond seeing the works of Michelangelo and Raphael, he would not have failed to draw sheet after sheet of copies after the antique, to visit the Palazzo della Cancelleria, decorated with the frescoes of his previous employer in Florence, and surely, to frequent the Florentine owned Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato, where he would have seen the frescoes of Salviati, Jacopino del Conte, Pirro Ligorio and Battista Franco, and met with fellow citizens like Santi di Tito or indeed, Salviati. In fact, as Marta Privitera observes, Macchietti’s works dating from immediately after the Roman sojourn, such as, for example, the Inhabitants of Andros2, are inspired by the antique statues, which Macchietti would have seen in Rome.
Upon his return to Florence in 1563, the artist enrolled in the newly founded Accademia del Disegno, and opened a workshop with his friend Mirabello Cavalori, another Florentine artist who had been a pupil of Michele Tosini as well. In 1564, the two painters collaborated on a monochrome painting of Lorenzo de’Medici receiving Michelangelo (now lost), for the catafalque of Michelangelo’s funeral in the church of San Lorenzo. In 1565, the Accademia undertook the decorations for the wedding of Duke Francesco I de’ Medici and Joanna of Austria, to which Macchietti contributed another grisaille painting of the Establishment of the Monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore (also lost). Following his return to his native city, the artist received numerous commissions from private patrons. For example, the Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist in a private collection, the Venus and Adonis in the Galleria Palatina in Florence, the Persephone in the Museo della Ca’d’Oro in Venice, and others3. In 1567, Benvenuto Cellini provided Macchietti with his first “public” commission, the altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, painted for Senator Pandolfo della Stufa to decorate his private chapel in the church of San Lorenzo, Florence4. The composition of this painting, which is still in situ, reflects Vasari’s elaborate mannerist style, and shows the influence of Parmigianino and the school of Raphael. Between circa 1570 and 1572, Macchietti was employed in the decoration of the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio, to which he contributed with two paintings of Medea Rejuvenating Jason and the Baths at Pozzuoli. In 1573, the artist, probably called by a Florentine at the court of Caterina de’ Medici, travelled to Paris, where he stayed for fifteen months. In the following years, Macchietti painted several altarpieces, in which he adopted a more restrained style, probably due to the influence of his friend Santi di Tito, and to the new spirit of the Counter-Reformation. In 1578, the artist moved to Naples, where he stayed until his return to his native city, in 1583, and, except for a brief stay in Spain, Macchietti spent the rest of his life in Florence, where he
1. G. Macchietti, The Madonna and Child with St. Anne, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
died in 1592. Macchietti was also an accomplished portrait painter, receiving important commissions such as those for the portraits of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici and Lorenzo il Magnifico, executed in 1585, as part of a series of twenty-two Medici portraits.
This exquisite painting of the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, was first identified as the work of Girolamo Macchietti by Herman Voss in 19655. The attribution has been confirmed by Marta Privitera, who writes that “This extremely refined panel with ‘The Virgin and Child with the Infant Baptist in a landscape’ is without doubt a work from the first maturity of the Florentine painter Girolamo Macchietti, executed in the years following the artist’s return to Florence in 1563, after his stay in Rome…”6. As Privitera observed, the arrangement of the figures within the landscape, the graceful, yet devout, atmosphere, the attention to natural light, as well as the refined draughtsmanship and the elegant handling of the paint, are indeed characteristics which recur in several paintings executed by Macchietti for private patrons, in the years following his return from Rome. Amongst these are the two versions of Adam and Eve, in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and formerly in the collection of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres7, and the Venus and Adonis in the Pitti Palace, Florence8. Furthermore, in these pictures as well as in the present one, the figures are intertwined with complex and elegant foreshortenings and torsions of anatomy, which denote the artist’s mastery of the drawing of the human form. Like all Macchietti’s paintings of this period, this Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist reveals the artist’s adhesion to the poetic pictorial language of Bronzino, as well as his knowledge of the work of Salviati and, in particular, Parmigianino. The influence of the Parmese Master is evident in the physiognomy of the Madonna, the treatment of the hands – with their long and pointed fingers – and hair, as well as in the enamelled quality of the paint and handling of the foliage and undergrowth. While in Rome, Macchietti saw the only painting by Parmigianino in the Eternal city at the time, the Vision of Saint Jerome in the church of Santa Maria della Pace, and now in the National Gallery, London. In fact, the figure of Saint John the Baptist in the altarpiece by Parmigianino was used by Macchietti for the same figure in his Christ in Glory, with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of circa 1565. That picture, now lost, is known through a preparatory drawing, which appeared on the European art market in 19909. Macchietti’s interest in the work of Parmigianino was such that, while in Rome, he acquired a number of engravings after his drawings10. The inclusion of Roman ruins in the landscape of the present panel, as well as in those of other pictures such as the Madonna and Child and Saint Anne in the Szépmüvészeti Muzeum, Budapest (fig.1)11, the Portrait of a Young Man formerly on the London art market12, or the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, Saint Elisabeth and Angels in a private collection13, constitutes further evidence of the lasting influence that Girolamo Macchietti’s two year Roman sojourn had on his work.
Jonathan Mennell has pointed out that a sixteenth century copy of this Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist is in a private collection14.
Florence 1503 - 1577 Florence
Oil on panel.
39.6 by 27.3 cm. (15 9/16 by 10 in.)
Inscribed (Cecchino?) Salviati / (?) 1 on the back of the panel; stamped with an unidentified wax seal of a central bee surrounded by 12 smaller bees, inscribed in an oval ribbon.
Michele Tosini first studied with Lorenzo di Credi (1459-1537), and possibly Antonio del Ceraiolo (died 1525?). In around 1516, he joined the studio of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio (1483-1561), the son of Domenico (1449-1494), who was at the head of a successful workshop painting in the tradition of the High Renaissance. The artist was known as Michele di Ridolfo because of the closeness of his relationship with Ridolfo, who loved him like a son, and with whom he started to collaborate at the age of seventeen. Michele’s early works show his adherence to the conservative style of the Ghirlandaio workshop, but as Carlo Gamba wrote in 1520, the young artist was not without individuality: “Ridolfo is associated with a young man, who is still inexperienced in the science of art but already self-assured”2. During the 1520s and 1530s, he continued to work along with his master, and in 1538, he was elected to the Company of St. Luke. As Heidi Hornik points out, during the 1540s, Michele gradually broke away from the traditional style of his master, and adopted the Maniera palette of Bronzino, Salviati, and Vasari. This is reflected, for example, in the 1545-50 Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, in the Palmer Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania State University3. By the 1550s, his reputation was established, and in 1561, when Ridolfo died, Michele took over the Ghirlandaio workshop. A close friend of Vasari, he participated in the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1557. Receiving commissions from both ecclesiastic and private patrons, in around 1559-1561, he painted an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints for the chapel of the convent of San Vincenzo, Prato, and in 1561, he completed his most important commission: the decoration of the Chapel of the Madonna di Loreto, in the Villa Strozzi, near San Casciano, Florence. The work included frescoes of the Four Evangelists and scenes from the Life of Christ. In 1563, Tosini assisted Vasari in the foundation of the Accademia del Disegno, and was put in charge of one of the most important projects of the Academy, the funeral celebration for Michelangelo in 1564. In this period, the artist produced a number of female bust-length figures which epitomize his adherence to the Mannerist style. Tosini was also active as a portraitist, executing, for example, a Portrait of Cosimo I, Francesco I, and Another Man, in a private collection, Florence, which Heidi Hornik dates about 15734.
This exquisite panel is inspired by Michelangelo’s famous drawing of Zenobia, one of three drawings given by the artist to his friend Gherardo Perini, and now in the Uffizi, Florence5. Michelangelo’s drawing was copied or imitated throughout the sixteenth century in Florence, and several drawn, painted, and printed examples exist by artists such as Bacchiacca, Alessandro Allori, and Michele Tosini. A number of versions by Tosini are known: three are published by Heidi Hornik in her 1990 thesis on Michele Tosini6; (one in the Accademia, Florence, another now in a private collection in Treviso and a third, from the Artimino sale, (whereabouts unknown); another painted version is in the National Museum, Krakow7; and one print after Michele Tosini is in the British Museum8. All the versions differ in details such as the decoration of the helmet, the design, placement or addition of jewels, and, in one case, the positioning of the eye and the length of the figure.
In comparing the painting in the Private Collection in Treviso9 with the original “Ideal Head” by Michelangelo, Heidi Hornik observes: “Tosini has changed the eyes and profile. Although both women gaze forward, the dark brown eyes of the Tosini work are far less piercing and more introspective, changing the overall expression. The profile of the Tosini has been softened. The lips are more sensuous. The angle made by the lips and chin is curvaceous, emphasising the beauty of the profile as a whole. The face of the armoured woman by Michelangelo is far more masculine. The elegance and sensuality of the Tosini is also seen in the depiction of the breasts. The nipples are just visible through the transparent drapery and accentuate their beauty and soft roundness. Michelangelo depicts the breasts differently, pressed by the band underneath and more muscular, more Amazon-like”. This voluptuous side of the subject is particularly evident in the present Ideal Head of a Woman, in which the young lady’s gaze, a mixture of amusement and enticement, appears ever more seductive. In any case, judging by the number of extant versions, the emphasis on the sensuous and alluring character of these ‘Ideal Heads’ seems to have ensured their success amongst private patrons.
The attribution of the present picture to Michele Tosini was first suggested by Paul Joannides, and confirmed by Heidi Hornik10, who dates Michele Tosini’s ‘Ideal Heads’ around 1565-70.
Venice 1727 - 1804 Venice
Oil on canvas.
61 by 51 cm (24 by 20 1/16 in.)
PROVENANCE: J.P Bosch, Madrid Spain; Gallery Brunner, Paris 1921; Private Collection, Paris; Galerie Cailleux, Paris, 1974; Private collection, USA, 1974-2007.
LITERATURE: E Sack, Giambattista un Domenico Tiepolo – Ihr leben und ihre werke, Hamburg, 1910, catal no. 448 ; A Rizzi, Udine, 1971 (mentioned in association with a related print); George Knox, Philosopher Portraits by Giambattista, Domenico, and Lorenzo Tiepolo, The Burlington Magazine, London, March 1975, pp. 147-155.
EXHIBITED: Galerie Cailleux, Giambattista, Domenico and Lorenzo Tiepolo/ Peintures, Dessins, Pastels, Paris 1974, no. 17.
Giandomenico started his career in his father’s studio in the early 1740s, copying his drawings and etchings. In 1747, he received his first important commission of fourteen pictures of the Via Crucis for the Oratory of the Crucifix in San Polo, Venice. From 1750, until his father’s death in 1770, Giandomenico worked both as Giambattista’s assistant, and as an independent artist. The early 1750s saw him working alongside Giambattista, on the decoration of the Würzburg Residenz, and producing his own works, such as the 1753 Institution of the Eucharist, in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. In 1757, Giandomenico and Giambattista decorated the family villa at Valmarana, near Vicenza. In these frescoes, Giandomenico succeeded in showing how well he could function in both his roles, painting, for example, scenes of oriental fantasies and rustic pleasures in the guesthouse, while his father decorated the villa with dramas from Greek mythology. In 1762, Giandomenico followed his father to Spain, where he remained until his father’s death. Shortly after his return to Venice, Giandomenico continued the Venetian tradition of monumental painting, producing some of his most impressive works, such as the 1773-4 Abraham and the Three Angels in the Accademia, Venice, and Building of the Trojan Horse, painted in the same years, and now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. In 1780, he was elected president of the Venetian Academy, a post he kept until 1783. In 1785, he decorated the ceiling of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace, Venice, with the Glorification of the Giustiniani Family. Giandomenico last paintings, produced in the 1790s, show scenes of playful, dancing, and swaying Punchinellos. As a draughtsman, Giandomenico worked continuously throughout his long life, producing a vast number of drawings, which, collectively, may well be regarded as his most lasting legacy. Executed in pen and wash, the drawings were produced, for the most part, in large series as independent works in their own right. They include a group of over three hundred religious drawings, known as the Large Biblical Series, the Scenes from Contemporary Life, numbering about one hundred sheets, and the celebrated 104 sheets entitled Divertimenti per il Ragazzi. These were drawn towards the end of Giandomenico’s life, and illustrate scenes from the life of Punchinello, the famous and popular character from the Commedia dell’Arte.
The present work belongs with a large group of over 50 paintings related to Giambattista Tiepolo’s series of twenty Portraits of Philosophers. These were listed in George Knox’s revealing article of 19751, where he divided them into five sets: Set A – comprising the original paintings by Giambattista; Set B – being those by Lorenzo after his father’s originals; Set C - those by Lorenzo after Giambattista, but smaller in scale; Set D – those by Domenico after his own etchings based on Giambattista’s (as listed in Set A), and Set E – those by Lorenzo after Domenico’s paintings. Knox further explains that the great
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1. Giandomenico Tiepolo, Head of a Turbaned Philosopher, etching. |
2. Giambattista Tiepolo, Head of a Turbaned Philosopher, oil on canvas, whereabouts unknown. |
majority of these paintings relate to the first book of the Raccolta di Teste2, a series of thirty etchings, executed by Domenico in 1757-1758, of which twenty are based on an equal number of idealized portraits of old men, which were painted some time prior to that date by Giambattista. These, as a result of a commission that probably fell through, remained in the artist’s studio, only to be etched by Domenico in 1757-1758.
Knox included the present Head of a Turbaned Philisopher in Set D, that is the group of ten paintings by Giandomenico, after his own etchings of Giambattista’s paintings of Set A. As he noted, they “…are consistent in style, preferring a more impressionistic manner, which is easily distinguished from that of set A; they are of good quality, and as a group they are entirely acceptable as the work of Domenico…”3. He further suggests that this series is also likely to have been commissioned as a “philosophical family”, following the pattern established by Giambattista, and that the client may have been Giambattista’s friend, Count Francesco Algarotti, the Venetian collector, writer and art critic, who died in 1764. Domenico’s philosophers are almost identical in size to those by Giambattista. In most of them, however, the lower part of the corresponding pictures by Giambattista, which include the hands and accessories of the sitters, is omitted. As a result, the heads in Domenico’s paintings are shown on a larger scale than those in Giambattista’s set of portraits. Furthermore, the same omission occurs in the etchings, which are in reverse to Giambattista’s series, but in the same direction as the paintings by Domenico. As Knox concluded, this clearly indicates that Domenico’s portraits of philosophers are executed after his own etchings, rather than after his father’s paintings of the same subjects. This theory is also reinforced by the closer resemblance noticeable between the etching and the matching painting by Domenico, than with the corresponding painting by Giambattista, as can be seen, for example, by comparing this Head of a Turbaned Philisopher to the etching(fig.1), and to the corresponding portrait by Giambattista in the Martin von Wagner Museum, Würzburg(fig.2)4.
San Matteo della Decima 1734 - 1802 Bologna
Oil on unlined canvas.
Oval: 70.7 by 84.6 cm (27 7/8 by 33 1/4 in.)
Aside from excursions to Venice in 1760 and Paris and London in 1788, Gaetano Gandolfi seems to have worked solely in his native Bologna, where his talents were soon noticed by local dilettanti. A brief period of study in Venice in 1760 was of great importance for the development of his art, and is reflected in the vigorous brushwork and rich colours of his paintings. The artist became famous primarily in Emilia and then in all Italy and beyond for his dramatic and moving altarpieces, vivid frescoes, compelling mythologies and elegant drawings. One of his first important decorative projects was a ceiling fresco of the Four Elements, painted for the Palazzo Odorici1. This was followed by work in several other Bolognese palaces, such as the Palazzo Guidotti, the Palazzo Centurione and the Palazzo Montanari. Another prominent commission was for the decoration of the cupola of the church of Santa Maria della Vita, painted between 1776 and 1779 with frescoes of The Virgin in Glory and The Sacrifice of Manoah. In the later years of his career Gandolfi also produced easel pictures of historical and mythological subjects. The secret of his great success lay in his ability to synthesize the results of experiment and artistic renewal with the established traditions of Bolognese painting. He was, thus, able to establish his reputation as both the last exponent of a glorious tradition and a considerable innovator. It was only natural, therefore, that Gaetano assumed the role of Bologna’s pre-eminent painter after the death of his brother Ubaldo in 1781.
Rik Scorza identified the figure in this picture as that of the rather obscure Saint Liborius. History relates that he was the fourth Bishop of Le Mans, a friend of St Martin of Tours, and died in 397. In 836, however, the Bishop of Le Mans at that time, Aldric, gave his relics to the young Diocese of Paderborn in Saxony, which had only recently been founded in 799 when Pope Leo III stayed with Charlemagne at the source of the river Pader for three months. Unfortunately the relics met with misfortune when, in 1622, they were robbed by Duke Christian of Brunswick during the Thirty Years War – he melted the shrine down to coin “priests” rival dollars. St Liborius is the Patron Saint of lithiasis (gall stones), good death, fever and colic. He is often depicted with the attributes of pebbles and a peacock2.
St Liborius is here represented in the act of blessing seven stones, a clear reference to the Saint’s talent for healing those afflicted with gallstones. The rich, expressive colouring and strong, atmospheric chiaroscuro are characteristic of Gandolfi’s style. Light flows from the upper right of the picture plane, illuminating the sumptuous, brocaded bishop’s mantle, and creating a glimmer in the jewel of the clasp. In the pensive expression of the sitter, and in the bony, elongated articulation of the hands, Gandolfi evokes a sense of rarefied elegance and powerful meditation.
As noted by Donatella Biagi Maino, this painting is stylistically comparable to the large altarpiece of Saints Emidio and Ivo, executed by Gaetano Gandolfi for the Church of San Petronio as an ex-voto following the earthquake of 17793. The painting, commissioned in 1780 and completed the following year, is similar in the rich tonality and in draughtsmanship to the present picture. As Donatella Biagi Maino has suggested, the present picture is datable to around the same date.
An eighteenth century inscription on the reverse of the stretcher, Parte/del muro/ ***/disopra4, indicates that the St Liborius could have formed part of a larger decorative scheme, perhaps a private commission by one of the Bolognese families for their Palazzo. This would also provide an explanation for the exceptional state of preservation of the painting.
Marseilles 1700 - 1782 Berlin
Oil on copper.
12 by 17 cm. (4 3/4 by 6 11/16 in.)
As the engravings of Le Veau and Le Mire attest, the numerous works of Lacroix de Marseilles proved immensely popular in the eighteenth century, both amongst Italian and French clients. Yet, astonishingly little is known about the life of the artist. Presumed to have been born in Marseilles c. 1700, the existence of two pendant Seaports exhibited at the Heim Gallery in Paris1, signed and dated 1743, are the only surviving testament to his artistic activity during the first fifty years of his life. The first written reference to the artist dates from 1750 when the Marquis de Vandières, travelling with Cochin and Soufflot, reportedly met Lacroix in Rome – a view of a Seaport now in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, is signed and dated Grenier. De La .Crois.fecit Rom 1750. In Rome, Lacroix certainly knew Manglard, a celebrated seascape painter from Lyon, as well as the Avignon Master, Claude-Joseph Vernet. Lacroix often imitated Vernet’s style and, given the apparent stylistic similarities between the two artists, it has been suggested that Lacroix was, in fact, a pupil of Vernet. This theory would also explain why Lacroix seems only to emerge as a painter in his own right after Vernet’s departure from Rome in 1753. Though Lacroix may have borrowed the subjects of his landscapes from Vernet – storms, seascapes and seaports – the artist differentiated himself from the realism of Vernet by his preference for fantastic architectural settings, capriccios, and for more ambitious and graphic compositions, akin to the work of Gaspard Dughet and of Rosa. Moreover, in his treatment of figures, the influence of Italian landscape painters such as Marco Ricci and Zuccarelli is of particular note. In 1757, Lacroix is documented as being in Naples where he painted Vesuvius and the surrounding countryside. In 1776, Lacroix exhibited his painting View of the Bridge and the Castle of Sant’Angelo at the Salon du Colisée and, in 1780 and 1782, he participated in the Salon de la Correspondence in Paris. In May 1780, the following advertisement appeared in Paris, “M.Delacroix, painter of Architecture, of Marines, and of Landscapes, who has long resided in Italy, proposes to take pupils at his home, rue de Vaugirard, by the Luxembourg”2. One can deduce from this text that Lacroix had definitely returned to France by this time.
This exquisite painting on copper is a particularly charming example of this mysterious artist’s work. Lacroix creates a truly idyllic scene; a group of brightly coloured figures, modelled with characteristic fullness and delicacy, rest on the banks of a river, illuminated by the warm Mediterranean light. Topographical details such as the fronds of the tree branches, the craggy profiles of the rocky outcrops and the lively spume of the waterfall are all executed with the minutest of brushstokes which seem to dance across the picture’s surface, whilst heavier impasto is employed in the rendering of the sky, whose cotton-like storm clouds derive from the paintings of Vernet.
The present picture illustrates the same section of the Falls as depicted in, The Falls of the Anio at Tivoli, signed and dated 1764, in the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin3. Many of the elements of the Berlin picture are also similar; the gesturing female figure and the fisherman, as well as the delicately rendered tree and the robust waterfall, but they are seen as if from the opposite banks. Such close similarities in technique and composition would suggest that the present painting dates from the same period as the Berlin picture.
Lyon 1728 - 1808 Lyon
A pair, oil on metal, signed with the initial P at lower left.
Each 16 by 24.1 cm. (6 5/16 by 9 1/2 in.)
An exceptionally diverse and prolific artist, Jean-Baptiste Pillement enjoyed a long and curiously cosmopolitan career. First trained by Daniel Sarrabat in Lyon, the young artist proved to be a precocious talent and, by the tender age of fifteen, he was working as a designer at the Gobelins tapestry factory in Paris. In 1745, he left Paris for Madrid where he remained for three years, and then to Lisbon where he designed sets of Rococo singeries and chinoiseries for the Dutch consul and art collector, Jan Gildemeester. After declining the honour of Painter to the King, a characteristically spirited decision but one that was, perhaps, encouraged by the attention he drew from the Inquisition for his outspoken free thinking ideas, in 1754, Pillement travelled to England. He arrived in London at a time when the fashion for chinoiserie was at its height. He soon established himself as a fashionable decorative painter, and attracted a number of important clients, including the connoisseur and actor David Garrick.
In 1761 Pillement returned briefly to Paris, before visiting Italy and, by 1763 was in Vienna where he executed ten paintings for the Kaiserhof for the Prince of Leichtenstein. He then travelled to Poland and was appointed Premier peintre du roi to King Stanislas August Poniatowski. In the late 1760s, Pillement returned to France by way of Vienna, Dresden and Bonn, where, in 1778, he painted three decorative canvases for Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon at Versailles. Pillement then went back to Portugal and it was during this period that he executed some of his finest landscape drawings. In 1789, in order to escape the chaos of the Revolution, Pillement retired to the small town of Pezenas, near Narbonne, in France.
According to an autobiographical account written by the artist in Vienna in 1762, Pillement arrived at the decision to concentrate on landscape painting while in England in the 1750s, where the genre was extremely popular. In general, Pillement’s landscapes do not aim at topographical exactitude but evoke the poetic essence of a countryside where man and nature exist in harmony. As one recent writer has noted of these works, “Nature is approached in a purely romantic and ideal vein not seen again until the time of Bidauld, Corot and others of their generation. All the ugly brutal truths of nature and peasant life in the Ancien Regime are transformed into a poetic world of harmony where a haze of contentment seems to envelop every scene”1. Indeed, the artist is known to have travelled with a sketchbook, and he produced a large number of rapid sketches – usually drawn in black chalk – of landscape, figural and animal motifs. These were then assembled into more complete and picturesque compositions as paintings.
These two small paintings on metal are enchanting examples of Pillement’s approach to the depiction of nature, filtered through his study of such Dutch masters as Aelbert Cuyp and Nicolaes Berchem. The metal support, a medium the artist favoured in order to best portray the dramatic light effects and verdant pastures of the Iberian peninsula, here lends a crystalline clarity to the Rococo palette of warm reds and blues. The fact that Pillement perfected his style quite early on in his career has made it extremely difficult to date his works. However, the luminous tonality of warm saffron hues in the present pair of landscapes could suggest that they may have been executed in the 1780s during Pillement’s years of residence in Portugal.
Paris 1748 - 1825 Bruxelles
Oil on unlined canvas in its original frame.
72.5 by 58 cm. (28 by 22 13/16 in.)
PROVENANCE: Claude Marie Meunier (Saint Amour 1770 - 1846 Paris); his wife, Emilie David, Calais; her son Jules Meunier (1813-1867); his wife, Pauline Derode, baronne Meunier (1824-1903), who died without heirs; given to Mathilde Jeanin, wife of Marius Bianchi (1822-1904), and daughter of Louis-Charles Jeanin (1812-1902); her daughter Renée Bianchi, the Vicontesse Fleury (1869-1948); thence by descent.
LITERATURE: P.A. Coupin, Essai sur J.L. David, peintre d’histoire, ancien membre de l’Institut, officier de la Légion d’honneur, Paris, 1827, p. 56; J. du Seigneur, “Appendice à la notice de P. Chaussarde sur L. David”, in Revue universelle des arts, V. XVIII, p. 367; J. David, Le peintre Louis David, 1748 - 1825, Souvenirs et documents inédits, Paris, 1880, pp. 509 and 647; J. David, Le peintre Louis David 1748 - 1825, Suite d’eaux fortes d’après ses oeuvres gravées par J.L. Jules David son petit-fils, Paris, 1882, II, fascicle. 8 (engraving); Ch. Saunier, “Voyage de David à Nantes”, in Revue de l’Art Ancien et Moderne, XIV, 1903; L. Rosenthal, Paris, n.d. [1904], p. 166; Ch. Saunier, “David et son école au Palais des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris”, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, May 1913, p. 279; T. Möller, “L’exposition de l’art français du XIXe a Copenhagen” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, August 1914, p. 258, illustrated on p. 159; R. Cantinelli, Jacques-Louis David, Paris and Brussels, 1930, 112, no. 127, where said to belong to “M. Bianchi”; Kl. Holma, David, son évolution et son style, Paris, 1940, p. 128, no. 133; J. Maret, David, Monte Carlo, 1943, pp. 86 and 118; L. Hautecoeur, Louis David, Paris, 1954, p. 230, no. 121; R. Verbraeken, Jacques-David jugé par ses contemporains et par la postérité, Paris, 1973, pp. 162 and 249, no. 125; A. Schnapper, David, Fribourg/New York, 1982, pp. 265-66, as in a private collection; P. Rosenberg and M.C. Stewart, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco French Paintings 1500-1825, San Francisco, 1987, pp. 145-46, illustrated on p. 145, as fig. 2, present location unknown; A. Schnapper, in Jacques-Louis David 1748-1825, exhibition catalogue [château du Versailles], Paris, 1989, pp. 484-85, under no. 214, illustrated on p. 185, as fig. 135, present location unknown; S. Nash, in Rembrandt to Renoir: European Masterpieces from The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, exhibition catalogue (Australian National Gallery, et al), 1992-93, p. 114, under no. 47, present location unknown; L. Eitner, French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century,I : Before Impressionism (The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue), Washington DC, 2000, p. 212, no. 13; L.-A. Pratt and P. Rosenberg, Jacques-Louis David 1748- 1823, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, II, Milan, 2002, p.1215; P. Lang in M. Reinhart-Felice, Sammlung Oskar Reinhart “Am Römerholz” Wintherthur: Gesamtkatalog, Basle, 2003, p. 276.
EXHIBITED: Paris, Palais des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris, David et ses élèves, 1913, no. 53, lent by Madame Bianchi; Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst (Musée Royale), Exposition d’art français du XVIIIè siècle, no. 67, lent by Madame Bianchi. (The original frame bears the authentic labels from both expositions).
This imposing Portrait of General Baron Claude-Marie Meunier, which until recently was housed in a French family collection and was last seen in public in 1913-14, depicts David’s son-in-law in ceremonial dress with the Cross of Commander of the Legion of Honour. Born in the Franche-Comté in 1770, Meunier is a typical member of the generation which came to maturity at the outbreak of the French Revolution. He joined as a volunteer in 1792, serving in all Napoleon’s campaigns: Germany, Italy, Egypt, and Austerlitz, where he was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour for his bravery, which he had also displayed as head of the Ninth Regiment, called L’incomparable. He was made a Baron of the Empire in 1809, and earned the rank of Brigadier Général in 1810
after being wounded twice at the Battle of Talavera in Spain. When the Bourbons returned to power in 1814, he rallied to the new regime, only to follow Napoleon during the 100 Days, commanding the young Imperial Guard. A man for all seasons, Meunier returned to serve the Bourbons after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, and later with equal alacrity Louis-Philippe. He died in Paris in 1846, and is buried next to David in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise. His name is inscribed on the south side of the Arc de Triomphe1.
On a more personal level, Meunier married David’s daughter Laure-Emilie-Félicité in March 1805, and they had two boys, one of whom became the Mayor of Lille. Between 1810 and 1812, David painted four sketchy portraits of his twin daughters, Laure-Emilie- Félicité and Pauline, and their husbands, Claude-Marie Meunier and Jean-Baptiste Jeanin2. The Portrait of Baron Jeanin is the more highly finished of the group, and is also signed and dated 18103, which provides a point of reference in determining a chronology for the pictures. Critics cannot explain why David left these Portraits in an unfinished state; they may have been intended to have the same degree of finish as the likeness of Madame David (signed and dated 1813) in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC4. However, the freshness and spontaneity of the likenesses of the girls, now in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco [Laure]5 and the Sammlung Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur [Pauline]6 represent a kind of liberation from the tighter manner David had employed between 1795 and 1805.
As befits a military hero of Meunier’s standing, the iconographic references in this Portrait are those of some of David’s most important works of the period. The jutting jaw of the pose, the resolute calm that emanates from Meunier’s person, and the hand in waist coat are all reminiscent of David’s Napoleon in his Study of 1812, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC7, while the elaborate uniform has the same magnificence, although to a lesser degree, as that in the Portrait of Count Antoine Français of Nantes of 1811 in the Jacquemart-André Museum, Paris8.
Another version of the Portrait of Meunier in a private collection, purporting to have the above-mentioned provenance and exhibition history, was exhibited in Jacques-Louis David, Empire to Exile at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, in 2005 9. The present painting, however, derives directly from the descendants of Madame Bianchi, Vicomtesse de Fleury, in an uncleaned state and on an unlined canvas attached to the original stretcher and frame. In addition, the back of the frame still shows the original labels of both the Paris and Copenhagen exhibitions, as well as the name of the lender, Madame Bianchi. This clearly shows that the provenance and exhibition history, cited in the catalogue of the Williamstown exhibition as that of the painting shown there, are, instead, those of this Portrait of Général Baron Claude Marie Meunier. Furthermore, the unfinished state, bold technique, and overall superior quality of the present work indicates that it is the original.
Saint-Nicolas-d’Attez 1823 - 1891 Colombes
Oil on panel
21.8 by 26.5 cm ( 8 1/2 by 10 1/2 in.)
Theodule-Auguste Ribot rose to become one of the leaders of a group of Realist painters in nineteenth century France who found inspiration in subjects and scenes taken from contemporary urban life. He had little or no conventional artistic training and, as a young man, found employment in a number of art-related fields. Through these, he was able to learn the fundamental principles of drawing and painting, which he then rehearsed at home. Using as models family members and close friends, Ribot executed paintings on a small scale derived from the everyday life of the Parisian working classes, particularly the activities of cooks and servant girls. Ribot’s familiarity with the people and the life he portrayed in these works explains the overwhelming sense of intimacy and directness that forms the genesis of his style. As a member of the Realist movement, Ribot depicted the poor in a manner that did not hide the reality of their fortuity, and the rough, rustic style that he developed was especially pertinent to the subject matter he preferred.
This delightful painting depicts a woman sitting on a low stool, seemingly absorbed in the humdrum task of peeling vegetables. Though the subject matter may recall Chardin, the mood and treatment are very different. By placing the sitter close to the picture plane, Ribot evinces an overwhelming sense of warmth and intimacy. This is accentuated by her pose; with head bowed and turned away from the viewer she seems enveloped in her own isolated and inherently timeless world. Her coarse, peasant-like features and, in particular, the heavy hands, are rendered with utmost sensitivity. A cool, clear light filters from the left of the picture plane, providing the only active element in this timeless scene, casting a fresh, jewel-like glow across the face of the sitter, and illuminating the white of her apron. Ribot’s brushwork renders the play of light on the coloured surface with a creamy touch that is both analytical and subtlely poetic. Though the dark, inky background of the interior is, most probably, the result of painting in lamplight, the sombre palette recalls the work of the seventeenth century Spanish and Dutch Masters, Velasquez and Frans Hals, as well as an understanding of the tonal canvases of Whistler. The composition is stripped to its bare essentials; Ribot includes only the common, everyday objects that belong in any kitchen – a casserole, a ladel, a copper pot, vegetables and a peeling knife. Yet the artist treats these objects with a respect close to reverence. Beyond their shapes, colours and textures, they are to him symbols of the life of common people. As the critic Eugène Véron observed: “His figures are modelled with a vigour which makes them resemble statues but ones made of flesh and bone. They have the true colour of human skin just as they have the vigorous construction, the robust movement, the complete anatomy of living bodies…Those who are less struck by the merits of his execution are drawn by the moral truth of the expression…Ribot also attaches to the hands an importance almost equal to that of the eyes. There is hardly a figure by Ribot of which one does not see the hands used to reinforce the effect of the expression”1.
Simple scenes such as this, of single cooks or maids engaged in their daily tasks, were Ribot’s main production in the mid 1860s.
Venice 1842 - 1917 Venice
Oil on unlined canvas. Signed Ciardi at lower left.
28.5 by 38 cm. (11 1/4 by 15 in.)
The son of a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance and of a Venetian mother, Guglielmo Ciardi entered the Academy in his native city at the age of eighteen, where for seven years he studied perspective and landscape. By 1866, he had begun to exhibit realistic landscapes of great promise. During his travels throughout Italy in 1868, Ciardi encountered artists painting plein-air landscapes. He exhibited, painted with Telemaco Signorini, frequented the Caffè Michelangelo, and visited the Demidoff Collection in Florence. While works of this period reveal a study of Odoardo Borrrani’s chiaroscuro effects, Ciardi’s innate tendency toward clear light reasserted itself later in the decade. He also journeyed to Rome, where he met Nino Costa, and was befriended in Naples by Domenico Morelli, Filippo Palizzi, and the painters of the Scuola di Resina.
After his return to Venice, Ciardi concentrated on colour and the dazzling effects of light reflecting on water. He redefined the century-old Venetian veduta of Carlevaris and Canaletto by focusing on everyday scenes. He thus captured uniquely the Venetian lagoon and the lush horizons near Treviso. In 1894, he accepted the chair of veduta painting at the academy, left vacant at the death of his former teacher Domenico Bresolin. His daughter, Emma (1878-1933), and his son, Beppe, (1875-1932), were also painters, but of more modest achievements.
This suggestive and lyrical View of the Laguna at Dawn is a characteristic example of Ciardi’s work of the 1880s, when the master expressed his fascination for the Laguna in a large number of “open views with the profile of Venice in the distance, or thin strips of beaches with the profile of Venice glimmering in the distance”1. In this vaporous and tranquil view, the artist has chosen to depict an early morning scene, with a cloudy sky, reflected as a mirror-image in the water. The horizon is defined by a thin strip of land running across the picture, leading the eye towards the distance to a hazy silhouette of Venice. The compositional symmetry creates balance, whilst the rendering of simple, geometric forms evokes an overwhelming sense of calm and repose. The seascape has an almost abstract quality; the motionless boat and the thin crescent moon are the only details of the picture by which the viewer is able to distinguish the sky from the sea. The canvas is a study of colour and light; the artist has captured the rich, luminous hues of dawn reflected in the stillness of the sea at nightfall. Here, the viewer witnesses the vibrant palette and broken brushstrokes typical of Ciardi’s later works.
Ferrara 1842 - 1931 Paris
Oil on panel. Signed (?) Boldini in black paint at lower left.
267 by 350 mm. (10 by 13 in.)
PROVENANCE: Jean-Gabriel Domergue (1889-1962); by descent in the family.
Born in Ferrara, Giovanni Boldini received his training from his father Antonio. His talent was soon recognized and, at the age of eighteen, he was already known in his native town as an accomplished portrait painter. Boldini travelled to Florence in 1862, where he formed close friendships with artists of the revolutionary movement of the Macchiaioli, such as Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini and Silvestro Lega. In 1871, following a trip to London, where the portraits of Gainsborough and Reynolds left an indelible mark on the artist, Boldini settled in Paris. In 1874 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars, winning public acclaim. In 1876, he travelled to Germany, where he met Adolf von Menzel, and to Holland, where he admired the portraiture of Frans Hals. Around that time, Boldini started to paint portraits of beautiful society women. In fact, his bold, painterly technique and flamboyant style proved so popular with the increasingly fashion-conscious society, that, by the turn of the century, Boldini had become one of the leading portrait painters in Europe, achieving a success in Paris equal to that of his friend John Singer Sargent in London. Among his numerous portraits, those of Giuseppe Verdi, Whistler, Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough, Count Robert de Montesquiou, Princess Bibesco and the Marchesa Casati, are but a few of the artist’s most famous sitters. Boldini befriended other society portrait painters such as Paul- César Helleu, James A. McNeill Whistler, and in particular Degas, who truly admired his work and once said of his friend: “Ce diable d’italien est un monstre de talent”. A tireless and extremely prolific painter and draughtsman, Boldini remained active to the very end of his life. In 1916, however, his eyesight began to deteriorate, and from 1927 he executed only charcoal drawings
While Boldini owes his celebrity to his portraits, he began his career as a landscape painter with the Macchiaioli movement in Florence, and continued to work in this genre throughout his life. In this landscape, Boldini depicts the Parisian countryside at noon. It is a scene of tranquillity – a shallow river runs beneath a stone bridge; a man in a white hat fishes from the bridge, washerwomen launder clothes in the gently flowing water beneath, while a rider crosses the bridge on his horse. The composition is painted on an unprepared panel on which, in several places, the pencil sketch is visible beneath the paint. On the verso, which is painted with thick, broad brushstrokes of vivid tones of blue, green, red, and touches of white, the artist illustrates a tree, the details of which are sketched with delicate and vibrant touches of crisp, luminous paint. The bare wood shows as a background through the paint, adding texture to the composition, whilst the rapidly sketched strokes of foliage juxtapose against the picture’s surface to create an overwhelming sense of dynamism and movement.
Stylistically, this sketch compares well with a number of other similar works dating from the late 1880s and early 1890s, and in particular, with several panels of similar size executed in 1890, such as the Mercato in Piazza delle Erbe a Verona1, in a private collection, Verona, Bassa Marea a Trouville (fig.1)2, also in a private collection, Ombrelloni sulla spiaggia3, and others. Interestingly, these pictures and the present sketch are all executed on small panels, measuring about 27 by 35 cm, a size which Boldini, judging from the over 120 extant panels of this type, must have particularly favoured.
Jean Gabriel Domergue (1889-1962) was a painter, draughtsman and poster artist, as well as a friend of Boldini. It is said that he had assembled a good collection, among which were a number of drawings and paintings by the Italian Master. In 1955, he was made curator of the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris. Until his death in 1962, he organised important exhibitions of works by Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Berthe Morisot and Goya. Domergue regarded himself as a pupil of Boldini, and such was his admiration of his teacher, that he had planned to hold an exhibition of the Italian artist’s work too. Unfortunately, his sudden death prevented the completion of this project. Nevertheless, an important retrospective of Boldini was held in Domergue’s honour at the Musée Jacquemart-André in 1963, one year after his death.
Ghent 1862 - 1926 Saint-Clair
Oil on canvas in the artist’s painted frame. Signed at upper right with the monogram TVR.
100 by 81.5 cm (39 3/8 by 32 in.)
PROVENANCE: Dr Auguste Weber, Luxembourg; Madame Veuve Auguste Weber, Luxembourg; J Scroeder, Brussels; Sale Enghien-les-Bains, Lombrail, Champin & Gauthier, 13th April 1986, Lot 28; thence by descent to the present owner
EXHIBITED: Brussels, Galerie Giroux, Rétrospective Théo van Rysselberghe, 1927, no. 19; Luxembourg (Grand Duchy), Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Théo van Rysselberghe, 1962, no. 24; Gand, Musée des Beaux Arts, Théo van Rysselberghe néo- impressionniste, 1993, no.36; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-arts, Théo van Rysselberghe, 2006, ill. P.217
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Théo van Rysselberghe, Lettre à G Morren, 14 May 1893; G van Zype, ‘Théo van Rysselberghe’, article in ‘Annuaire de l’Académie royale de Belgique, Brussels, 1932; Ronald Feltkamp, ‘Théo van Rysselberghe, Catalogue raisonné, Brussels, 2003, no. 1893-002, ill. P.297
Theo van Rysselberghe enrolled in the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in Ghent at an early age. In 1879, he transferred to the Académie Royale des Beaux-arts in Brussels under the tutelage of Jean-Francois Portaels, whose Orientalist style the artist greatly admired. In 1882, he won a travelling scholarship, visiting Spain and Morocco, accompanied by his friends Dario de Regoyos and Constantin Meunier. In these early works, first exhibited at L’Essor in 1883, his palette was clearly indebted to the work of Frans Hals, but in the loose brushwork, warm colours and exotic scenes bathed in brilliant sunlight, they demonstrated the influence of this first Moroccan trip. That same year, Van Rysselberghe attended the historic meeting at which the avant-garde exhibition society, Les Vingt, was created. Comprising a group of young radicals, most notably, James Ensor, Felicien Rops and Fernand Khnopff, these artists were united in their determined revolt against the “outmoded academism” of the time. Van Rysselberghe was particularly impressed by the work of James Mc Neil Whistler; the subdued colours and gradations of black of his early portraits, for example, Octave Maus of 1885 in the Museum of Modern Art, Brussels, reflects the influence of Whistler’s colour experiments. In 1886, on a trip to Paris, Van Rysselberghe viewed the works of the Impressionist painters, Monet and Renoir, and he began to experiment with the decomposition of light and colour, adopting a bright and luminous palette as a result. He was particularly impressed by the work of Georges Seurat, to whom he was introduced by the poet, Emile Verhaeren. Before long, Van Rysselberghe had abandoned realism in favour of the Pointillist technique, becoming the main exponent of the style in Belgium. He first adopted the “divisionist” technique in 1887 in the Portrait of Alice Sèthe, now in the Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. This was followed by a series of Neo-Impressionist portraits, each psychological studies of their sitters, and culminating in the group portrait The Reading, in the Ghent Museum, which ingeniously portrayed the symbiosis between Belgian and French literary and artistic circles. These works were extolled in Germany and Austria, and his exhibitions at the Keller & Reiner Gallery, Berlin in 1898, and the Vienna Secession in 1899, proved particularly successful.
This impressive portrait depicts Auguste Weber, the cousin or nephew of Emile Mayrisch, a famous collector and patron of modern art in Luxembourg, with whom Van Rysselberghe had become intimate. Executed in the pointillist manner, the composition is made up of tiny dots of brilliant colour designed to merge in the beholder’s eye, thus producing intermediary tints more luminous than those obtainable from pigments mixed on the palette. The actual result, however, does not conform to this theory. From a comfortable distance, the mixing of colours in the eye remains incomplete; the dots do not disappear but are clearly visible as the tesserae of a mosaic. The brushstrokes retain a rhythmic pattern, and the effect is to give the canvas the quality of a shimmering, translucent screen.
The present painting is stylistically comparable to a number of portraits executed in the pointillist manner and dating from the early 1890s, such as the 1892 Portrait of Emile Verhaeren in his Study (rue du Moulin), now in the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels1. Though the latter is not placed within a frame painted by the artist, the palette of greens and browns are similar, as are the clusters of white dots that dance across the picture’s surface to form swirling, decorative patterns on the canvas.
NOTES FOR THE CATALOGUE
PART I - DRAWINGS
No. 1
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo
1. “…Certo che tra gli essercitanti il maneggiar dei colori ne le mura, ne le tele e in tavole, egli è de’ rari: in fresco,
a guazzo, e a olio vale, molto sa, e bene adopra; onde è peccato il pur troppo maturo dei suoi anni in la vita. Un
conforto in sé tiene la di lui decrepitudine ormai il sapere egli che le belle e laudate cose da la mano uscitegli lo
ravviveranno in infiniti luoghi ne lo spirito della memoria. Tal che la fama saragli, per tutta Italia al nome, più
che al presente, maggiore. Di dicembre, in Vinezia, 1548”. (P. Aretino, Lettere, ed. 1957,vol. 2, 1543-1555,
pp. 226-267).
2. In his catalogue entry for this painting in the Savoldo exhibition of 1990, Pier Virgilio Begni Redona
argues that the figure of the saint traditionally identified as St. Bernard is, in fact, St. Leonard of
Noblac. This suggestion is based on the fact that the saint in the picture wears the white habit of the
Benedictine order and that he holds a chain, to symbolize his status as the patron saint of prisoners.
(Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, Exhibition Catalogue, Brescia and Frankfurt, 1990, p.102, under no.I.3)
3. Francesco Frangi, Savoldo, catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence, 1992, pp. 90-92, no. 26.
4. Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, op. cit., illustrated p. 14.
5. The 1987 restoration of the painting revealed that the Della Torre coat-of-arms was added later,
probably by the descendants of the original donours (see Pier Virgilio Begni Redona, op.cit., p.102,
under no.I.3
6. A. Stix and L. Fröhlich-Bum, Beschreibender Katalog Der Zeichnungen in der Graphischen Sammlung
Albertina, Vienna, 1926, p.37, no.52, illustrated: Black chalk, heightened with white, on greenish paper
(the drawing appears to be in poor condition, and it seems likely that the paper was originally blue)
273 x 168 mm.
7. Per Bjurström, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections, Italian Drawings, Stockholm, 1979, no.246: black
and white chalk, on blue paper. Irregularly cut, 197 x 261 mm.
8. Frangi, op.cit, pp.93-4, no. 27.
9. Ibid., pp.109-110, no. 33.
10. G. Goldner and L. Hendrix, European Drawings – 2, Catalogue of the Collections, The J. Paul Getty
Museum, Malibu, California, 1992, p116-117, no. 45, illustrated.
11. Discovered by Gianni Minozzi, a dealer based in Milan, Italy.
No. 2.
Pietro Buonaccorsi, called Perino del Vaga
1. The sculpture was recorded in drawings by Heemskerk (see Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein,
Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, London 1986, p.64, cats and figs.20 and 20a).
2. Giulio’s Sala di Psiche project dates from around 1528.
3.See, Elena Parma et al., Perino del Vaga tra Raffaello e Michelangelo, exhibition catalogue, Mantua 2001, p.313..
4. See Elena Parma et al, op. cit., p.315, fig. 180 and Philip Pouncey and J.A. Gere, Italian Drawings in ...
the British Museum, Raphael and his Circle, London 1962, cat 177, pl.148.
No. 3
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, called Parmigianino
1. See Popham, op.cit. in Literature, vol.I, p.33
2. In his introduction to the catalogue of 1971 (op. cit), Popham describes the movement of a large group of Parmigianino drawings from the collection of the Earl of Arundel to Armano: Arundel owned more than 130 drawings by Parmigianino and many were bought by Zanetti at the sale in England in 1720 organised by Arundel’s son, Lord Stratford. Zanetti bought the drawings back to Italy and they came on the market again in about 1787, twenty years after his death. For the most part the group seems to have been divided in two, either sold to Baron Dominique Vivant Denon or handed to the dealer Armano ( see Popham, 1971, pp.32-33)
3. See Popham, op. cit., 1971, vol. I, cat.521, vol. II pl.195 and
4. See D. Ekserdjian, “Unpublished drawings by Parmigianino, Towards a Supplement to Popham’s catalogue raisonné”, Apollo Magazine, August 1999, p. 23, no.38, fig.52.
5. See Popham, op. cit, vol.I, cat. 5, and vol.II, pl.189.
6. ibid., vol.I, cat. 193, vol.II, pl.196.
7. Essay by David Ekserdjian, in David Franklin, The Art of Parmigianino, New Haven and London 2003, p.39.
8. See David Franklin, op. cit., 2003, p.128, cat.26.
9. For these three examples, see, David Franklin, op. cit., 2003, cats.31, 34 and 35 and 27 and 28. For the Louvre ‘Martyrdom of St Paul’ and other drawings with a combination of pen and wash and white heightening see Sylvie Beguin, et al., Parmigianino, The Drawings, Turin and London 2000, pl.38 and 31-36.
10. David Franklin, op. cit., 2003, p.166
No. 4.
Giulio Pippi, called Giulio Romano
1.Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography translated by George Bull, New York, 1980, ch.40, 80:1.
2. Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (edition of 1568) translated by Gaston de Vere, London 1996 , vol. II, p.136
3. Exhibition catalogue, Giulio Romano, Mantua 1989, p. 145
4. Giorgio Vasari, op. cit., London 1996, p.137
5. See Janet Cox Rearick, in exhibition catalogue, Giulio Romano Master Designer, New York, Hunter College, 1999, p.25.
6. See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., Mantua 1989, p.144.
7. See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 1999, New York, cat.31.
8. See exhibition catalogue, ibid., 1999, p.139.
9. See exhibition catalogue, op cit., 1989, p.228
10. See Frederick Hartt, Giulio Romano, New Haven 1958, vol.II, figs. 474-483.
11. Giulio collected drawings after the antique, his own and those of other artists, but also, like his patron Federico Gonzaga, actual antique sculpture. See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 1989, p.233.
(essay by Howard Burns, “Quello cose antique et moderne belle de Roma Giulio Romano, il teatro, l’antico”.
12. Exhibition catalogue, op. cit., 1999, p.19.
No. 5
Battista Franco, called Il Semolei
1. Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Inv. no. RF 38405, pen and brown ink on beige paper, 156 x 206 mm. Anne Varick Lauder, Battista Franco c. 1510-1561. His Life and Work with Catalogue Raisonné, Ph.D dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2004, vol. II, pp. 598-599, nº 411 DA (Franco), vol. IV, fig. 292.
2. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by Gaston du C. de Vere, vol. II, New York and Toronto, 1996, pp. 504-505.
3. Archivio di Stato, Florence, filza 105, Da un Registro di Lettere e di Memorie del Governo del Duca Guid’Ubaldo II, filza 1, published in Giorgio Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati: con una tavola fuori testo, Florence, 1936, pp. 147-148, CLXXXVI.
4. Gronau, op. cit., 1936, p. 148.
5. Gronau, op. cit., 1936, p. 147.
6. Peter Ward-Jackson, Italian Drawings: 14th-16th Centuries, vol. I, London, 1979, pp. 68-70, no. 140; Lauder, op. cit., 2004, vol. II, pp. 424-425, no. 183 DA (Franco), vol. IV, fig. 282.
7. This is likely to be a studio copy after a now lost drawing by Franco. See Linda Wolk-Simon in Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections, exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, pp. 128-129, no. 115 (Franco) and Lauder, op. cit., 2004, vol. II, pp. 678-679, no. 17 DC (copy after Franco), vol. IV, fig. 283.
8. Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Drawings. Venetian and North Italian Schools, London, 1994, p. 95, no. 804 (attributed to Bernardino Gatti); Lauder, op. cit., 2004, vol. II, pp. 315-316, no. 43 DA (Franco), vol. IV, fig. 284.
9. As discussed in Lauder, op. cit., 2004, vol. 1, pp. 78-80..
10. Henri Zerner, The Illustrated Bartsch, Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century. School of Fontainebleau, vol. 32 (formerly vol. 16, part 1), New York, p. 252, no. 7 (156). For the drawings, see Jaffé, op. cit., 1994, p. 85, no. 792 and Veronika Birke and Janine Kertész, Die Italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina: Generalverzeichnis, Vienna, 1992-1997, vol. II, p. 830, Inv. 1561; Lauder, op. cit., 2004, vol. II, pp. 311-312, no. 38 DA (Franco) vol. IV, fig. 302; p. 648, no. 473 DA (Franco) vol. IV, fig. 303.
11. Vasari, op. cit., vol. II, p. 508.
No. 6.
Taddeo Zuccaro
1.Giorgio Vasari recorded (con annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, Le Vite .., Florence 1881, vol.VII, p.90 “Verginia, figliouola del duca Guido Baldo d’Urbino, fu mandato Taddeo a ritrarla; il che fece ottimamente: ed avanti che partisse da Urbino, fece tutti i disegni d’una credenza, che quell duca fece poi fare di terra in Castel Durante per mandare al re Filippo di Spagna”...plus Note 1, referring to a letter addressed to Vittoria, wife of Guidobaldo, of 15 January 1963, describing the subject of the decoration of the service as the History of Julius Caesar “le storie di Giulio Cesare...”. See also, Giorgio Vasari, trans. Gaston Du C. de Vere, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters..., London 1912-15, vol. VIII, p.226-7
2. John Gere, “Taddeo Zuccaro as a designer for Maiolica”, Burlington Magazine, July 1963, vol., pp.306-315.
3. See Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari fratelli pittori del Cinquecento, Milan 1998, vol.I, ch.5 “La Credenza spagnola e altri disegni per maioliche”, pp.79-102.
4. See John Gere, op. cit., figs.13, 14 and 15.
5. See Cristina Adidini Luchinat, op.cit. p.98, fig.38 and John Gere, Taddeo Zuccaro, his development studied in his drawings, London 1969, fig. 44.
6.see John Gere, op. cit., fig.36, 37, 38 and 40. There is also a considerable group of related drawings in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, many of the same scale as the present drawing, some by Taddeo himself but the majority by Federico and other assistants. These are listed and referred to by Cristiana Acidini Luchinat, op. cit., see p.96, figs. 32-35 and notes 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45.
7. See for example, Cristina Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., p.208, figs. 88,90 and 92, for the two Caprarola drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum and one in the Louvre. And see John Gere, op. cit., 1963, p.313
8. See Cristina Acidini Luchinat, op.cit., p.24 and figs.45-55. And the drawing for Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot formerly in the collection of Herbert List, see John Gere, op. cit., cat.136, fig.128a.
9. See exhibition catalogue, Gian Carlo Bojani in “Per Taddeo e Federico Zuccari nelle Marche”, Sant’Angelo in Vado, 1993, p.71.
No. 7
Marco Pino da Siena
1. See Pier Luigi de Castris, Polidoro da Caravaggio fra Napoli e Messina, Milan and Rome, 1988, p.12-13, figs.10 and 11 and p.14, fig.II.2
2. Andrea Zezza, Marco Pino, L’opera completa, Naples 2002, cat. C25 and p.184, pl.40.
3. Andrea Zezza, ibid., p.101, pl.III.17, p.267, cat.A35 and p.150, pl.22, p.268, cat. A38.
4. Sotheby’s, London, 4 July 2007, lot 32.
5. See Andrea Zezza op. cit., p.100, III.16, cat.C.26
6. See Andrea Zezza, ibid., p.205-6, V.14 and 17, cat.A49
7. See Andrea Zezza, ibid., p.93.
8. See Andrea Zezza, ibid., p.19.3
9. As discussed in Lauder, op. cit., 2004, vol. 1, pp. 78-80..
10. Henri Zerner, The Illustrated Bartsch, Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century. School of Fontainebleau, vol. 32 (formerly vol. 16, part 1), New York, p. 252, no. 7 (156). For the drawings, see Jaffé, op. cit., 1994, p. 85, no. 792 and Veronika Birke and Janine Kertész, Die Italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina: Generalverzeichnis, Vienna, 1992-1997, vol. II, p. 830, Inv. 1561; Lauder, op. cit., 2004, vol. II, pp. 311-312, no. 38 DA (Franco) vol. IV, fig. 302; p. 648, no. 473 DA (Franco) vol. IV, fig. 303.
11. Vasari, op. cit., vol. II, p. 508.
No. 8.
Francesco Vanni
1.Marco Ciampolini, Drawing in Renaissance and Baroque Siena, 16th and 17th Century Drawings from Sienese Collections, Georgia 2002, under cat.17 a and b, p.103
2. See, for example, Alessandro Brogi, Ludovico Carracci, Bologna 2001, vol. I, cat.13, vol.II, fig.44..
3. Peter Anselm Riedl, Disegni dei Barocceschi Senesi (Francesco Vanni e Ventura Salimbeni ), Florence 1976, p.32, cat.15 and fig.15; Françoise Viatte, Dessins Toscans, XVIe-XVIII siècles, vol. I, Paris 1988, cats.518 and 519.
4. See P.A. Riedl, Loc. Cit. and extract from Ugurgieri Azzolini, Le Pompe Senesi, Pistoia 1649, vol.II, p.372 and following pages. See also, Alessandro Brogi, op. cit. p.118 (this includes a discussion of the mistaken identity of the Rijksmuseum saint who has in some of the literature been described as St. Anthony). Other hypotheses discussed in the literature are that the original composition was the bozzetto, that it is indeed by Vanni and that this inspired Lodovico’s version, or that the bozzetto is actually by Lodovico and that either it or the Rijksmuseum painting could be the source for Vanni’s work. Another theory, suggested by Sir Denis Mahon, is that both the Ludovico and the Vanni
compositions were based upon a lost work by Barocci (see exhibition catalogue, Ludovico Carracci, Bologna and Fort Worth 1993, cat. 14, p.30) while more recently, and perhaps a mistake, the Rijksmuseum painting, as well as the Uffizi modello, was given to Vanni (Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodino in the Dictionary of Art, p.884 vol.31, London 1996.
5. Berenice Davidson, “A Painting and a Drawing by Francesco Vanni”, Bulletin of Rhode Island School of Design, December 1958, fig.6.
6.Veronika Birke and Janine Kertesz, Die Italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina, Vienna 1992, vol.I, pp.404-5.
7. Françoise Viatte, op. cit., cats. 516, 521 and 526.
8. See sale, Sotheby’s New York, 25 January 2002, lot 32.
9. Berenice Davidson, op. cit., p.4.
10. Sue Welsh Reed, in exhibition catalogue, Italian Etchers of the Renaissance and Baroque, Boston Museum of Fine Art, 1989, p.102).
No. 9
Abraham Bloemaert
1. See Jaap Bolten, op. cit., under Literature, vol.I, p.2.
2. See, M Roethlisberger, op. cit. under Literature, vol.I, chapter: Biographies and Documents, by Marten Jan Bok, p.570.
3. See M. Roethlisberger, Literature, Loc., cit., and Jaap Bolton, op. cit., under Literature, vol.I, cat.99 and vol.II, fig.99.
4. See Jaap Bolten, op. cit, under Literature, cat. and fig. 145 and see M. Roethlisberger, op. cit., under Literature, vol.II, figs.87 and 88
5. M. Roethlisberger, op. cit., under Literature, p.15.
6. See Jaap Bolten, op.cit., under Literature, cat and fig.213.
No. 10.
Giulio Benso
1. Mary Newcome, The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, vol.3, p.737 (the groups first defined by Mary Newcome Schleier in the exhibition catalogue Maestri genovesi dal Cinque al Settecento, Biblioteca di Disegni, vol. X, Florence 1976, p.9).
2. See Mary Newcome Schleier, Genoese Drawings in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 2004, cat 47, pp.84-85.
3. See exhibition catalogue, op. cit., Uffizi 1989, cat.37, fig.45.
4. Carlo Ridolfi, Le Meraviglie dell’arte, Venice 1648, ed. D.F. von Hadeln, Berlin 1914-24..
No. 11.
Pieter Holsteyn the Elder
1. London, Christie’s, 11 April 2002, lot 698.
2. London, Christie’s, 6 July 1999, lot 225.
3. Burlington Magazine, London: Vol. 108, no. 757, April 1966, pp211-214; Ill, fig.58 p.214.
No. 12
Anthonis Sallaert
1. Richard J. Campbell and Jane Immler Satkowski, “Master Drawings from the Collection of Alfred Moir”, University of Minnesota Press, 2000
No. 13.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens
1. Julius Held, Selected Drawings, second edition, Oxford 1986, p.9
2. See Julius Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens, Princeton 1980, vols. I and II, cat.400, figs.390-392.
3. Indeed the Fischer sale catalogue identified the present drawing as St. Norbert.
4. See Peter Sutton, Drawn by the Brush, Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, New Haven and London, 2004, cat.13 and Julius Held, op. cit., Princeton 1980, cat.419, pl.407.
5. According to Peter Sutton, (ibid., under cat.13, p.13) the landscape background in the St Norbert appears to have been added by the artist at a later date.
6. Held, op.cit., Oxford 1986, p.10.
7. See Julius Held, Rubens Selected Drawings, revised edition, Oxford 1986, cat.203, figs.195 and 196 and for illustrations in colour of the drawing and the related painting see, Alejandro Vergara, Las Tres Gracias de Rubens, Madrid 2001, p.70, figs.43-44.
8. Held, op. cit., Princeton 1980, vols I and II, cat. 384, pl.375 and cat. 416,pl.405 (respectively).
9. For another depiction of St Lambert, see the drawing by Anthonis Sallaert, number 12 in the present catalogue.
No. 14.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck
1. Christopher Brown, see literature, fig.1.
2. Ibid., pp.150-151.
3. Ibid., pp.150-151, no. 39, illustrated..
4. Ibid.,p.150, fig. 3.
5. Ibid., p. 150
6. Julius Held, see literature.
7. Christopher Brown, op.cit.,p. 150.
No. 15.
Jacob Jordaens
1. R.A.d’Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, Catalogue Raisonné, Brussels 1974 Vol. III; (A219), ill. 234.
2. Ibid., (A175), ill 186.
No. 16
Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino
1. There are a number of fine black chalk studies amongst this group but for the most part, they are executed, as here, in pen and ink and wash. Apart from a study of Two Women Conversing in the Ashmolean, the use of red chalk seems to have been reserved for the more patrician areas of his work. See Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, London 1991, p.205 and p.206, cat.183.
2. Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the collection of Her Majesty The Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, p.110.
3. Mahon and Turner note that painted portraits by Guercino are rare and catalogue only two of the drawings in Windsor as portraits: an elderly gentleman and a bearded man, both of whom are characters more prosperous and genteel than the one seen here, op. cit., p.111 and cats.316 and 317, pls. 283 and 284.
4. See David Stone, Guercino Master Draughtsman, works from North American Collections, Padua 1991, pp.182-3, cat. 79.
5. See Luigi Salerno, I Dipinti di Guercino, Rome 1988, cat.326, p.388.
6. See Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta, op. cit., cat.208, pl.31.
No. 17.
Giandomenico Tiepolo
1. Antonio Morassi, A complete catalogue of the paintings of G.B.Tiepolo, London, 1962, p. 65, fig. 365.
2. Ibid., p. 58, fig. 205.
3. Giorgio Vigni, Disegni del Tiepolo, pp. 91-93, nos. 184-193, pl. 184-193.
4. Ibid., p.92, no. 188, fig. 188.
5. Antonio Morassi, op.cit., p. 3-4, figs. 210-213.
No. 18.
Giandomenico Tiepolo
1. Op. cit., see literature, pp. 27-47..
2. Op. cit., p. 35 and pp. 110-1, no. 21.
3. Sale Sotheby’s, New York, 22 November 1970, lot 25
4. Gealt and Knox, Op.cit., pp. 110-1, no.20.
5. Op.cit., p. 24.
6. Op.cit., pp. 186-92, nos. 83-8.
No. 19.
Théodule-Augustin Ribot
1. Email correspondence dated 27th October 2008.
2. Le Cuisinier Sonneur, Galerie Bernheim Jeune, Paris, 1887 and Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Feb 14/ March 14 1971, The Etching Renaissance in France 1850-1880, photo Witt Library.
No. 20
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps
1. “Bien d’autres peintres, après lui, on fait de l’Orient leur spécialité’: aucun n’a égalé la puissance de pénétration avec laquelle il en a rendu les aspects, les costumes et les types”, M. F.-A. Gruyer, Notice des Peintures, Chantilly, Musee Conde’, Paris, Braun, Clement et Cie, Editeurs, 1899, p. 455.
2. Dewey F. Mosby, Alexandre Gabriel Decamps 1803-1860, in two volumes, Garland Publishing, Inc. New York & London, 1977, n.86, ill. plate 24.
No. 22.
Alfred Stevens
1. Benezit, E., Dictionaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 1955, Vol. 8, p.120.
2. Oral communication to the previous owner.
No. 24.
Carl Olof Larsson
1. Letter dated 12 December 2008.
2. Inv. no. GKM 1235. Borkförlaget Bra Böcker, 1992, På Modellbordet, Göteborgs Konstmuseum,, p.247, pl. 261.
3. Inv. nos. NMG 523/1896, NMG 13/1921, NMG 330/1896, NMG 1/1908. Carl Larsson, Stockholm Nationalmuseum, Borkförlaget Bra Böcker, 1992, Liggande Modell, 1896, p.283, pl. 287.
4. Inv. no. NMH 117/1908. Carl Larsson, Detaljstudier till Operaplafonen, National Museum Stockholm, illustrated on the Stockholm Nationalmuseum website.
5. Inv. no. NMH 23/1908. Carl Larsson, Detaljstudier till Operaplafonen, National Museum Stockholm,, illustrated on the Stockholm Nationalmuseum website.
6. Inv. no. NMH 113/1908. Carl Larsson, Detaljstudier till Operaplafonen, National Museum Stockholm, illustrated on the Stockholm Nationalmuseum website.
7. Tancred Borenius, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, March 1937, Vol. 70, No. 408, p.151.
No. 25.
Paul Signac
1. “…it is valuable and very practical; in a few minutes one can succeed in taking notes that are impossible by any other means – the fluidity of a sky, certain transparent effects, a whole mass of small pieces of information that slow work cannot give, since the effects are so fleeting”. Letter from Pissarro to Signac, 30 August 1888, in Marina Ferretti Bocquillon, Signac aquarelliste, Paris: Adam Biro, 2001, p.13.
2. “I am trying watercolour. It isn’t working at all, absolutely not. I can see that it is a very valuable means of collecting information, but it will take me a lot longer to be able to use it.” Paul Signac, A collection of Watercolors and Drawings, Essays by Marina Ferretti Bocquillon and Charles Cachin, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, Arkansas Art Centre, 2000, p.14.
3. Paul Signac, A collection of Watercolors and Drawings, Essays by Marina Ferretti Bocquillon and Charles Cachin, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, Arkansas Art Centre, 2000, Ill. p.34: No 6.
4. Paul Signac, op.cit., p.14
5. Signac, Le port de Saint Tropez, watercolour, 22.5 x 27 cm, Boisgirard &Associes, Sunday, August 12, 2007, Lot 18.
PART II - PAINTINGS
No. 29
Jacopo Comin, alias Robusti, called Il Tintoretto
1. The Agnews label pasted to the back of the frame lists the company galleries in London, Liverpool and Manchester. The Liverpool premises were closed down in 1909.
2. “Comin“ rather than “Robusti“ was recently identified as being Tintoretto’s original surname, see the exhibition catalogue, Tintoretto, Madrid, 2007, p.22.
3. Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, Milan 1584, p.434.
4. Miguel Falomir, “Tintoretto’s Portraiture“, in exhibition catalogue, op. cit., Madrid 2007, p.98.
5. Miguel Falomir, ibid.., p.112.
6. See Paola Rossi, Tintoretto, I ritratti, Milan 1990 (first published Venice 1974, pl.118, cat.48, pls. 149 and 150, cat.146, pl.181, cat.148 and pl.111, cat.100 and pl.179, cat.60.
7. Miguel Falomir, op. cit, p.103-4
8. W.R. Rearick, “Reflections on Tintoretto as a Portraitist“, Artibus et historiae, Vienna, no.31, 1995, p.62.
9. W.R. Rearick, ibid., p.65.
No. 30.
Girolamo Macchietti
1. Raffaello Borghini, Il Riposo, Marescotti, Florence, 1584, p.604.
2. Marta Privitera, Girolamo Macchietti, un pittore dello Studiolo di Francesco I, 1996, p.96-97, no. 8.
3. Ibid., see nos. 8,10,11,12,13,16, and 21..
4. Ibid., p.118-119, no.26.
5. Letter to the previous owner dated 17th September 1965.
6. Letter dated 14th February 2008: La raffinatissima tavola con “la Madonna con il Bambino e San Giovannino in un paesaggio” è senza dubbio un’opera della prima maturità del pittore fiorentino Girolamo Macchietti, eseguita nel periodo successivo al suo rientro a Firenze nel 1563 dal viaggio di istruzione a Roma…
7. Marta Privitera, op.cit., pp. 102-103, nos. 12-13.
8. Ibid., p. 100-101, no. 11
9. Ibid., p.94, no. 6
10. Ibid., p.29.
11. Ibid., p.112-113, no. 21.
12. Ibid., p.115, no. 23
13. Marta Privitera, Macchietti e Cavalori “amicissimi compagni”, in Paragone, May 2006, no. 67 (675), p. 16-17, pl. 13.
14. Email correspondence dated 5thDecember 2008 - Oil on panel: 61 x 51 cm (24 x 20 1/16 in.)
No. 31.
Michele Tosini, called Michele di Ridolfo
1. The inscription Salviati could refer to an old attribution to the artist Francesco Salviati (1510-1563), to whom several works by Tosini have been mistakenly attributed in the past. It might also refer to a member of the noble Florentine family; one such member, Filippo Salviati, a close friend of Caterina de’ Ricci, paid for the renovation of the Dominican monastery of San Vincenzo, Prato, restoring the church and building the nuns choir. Tosini’s first daughter, Dianora, joined the convent in 1540, and served under the direction of Caterina de’ Ricci. Her presence in the convent won her father several commissions, including the Madonna di Loreto and Six Saints, executed between 1559 and 1561, and in which, one of the saints represented is said to be a portrait of Filippo Salviati (See Roberta Roani Villani, Contributo a Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, in Antichità Viva, Florence, 1982, no. 1, p. 20, and note 8).
2. Heidi J. Hornik, Continuity, Innovation, and Connoisseurship / Old Master Paintings at the Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2003, p.24.
3. Ibid., p. 26, pl. 1, fig. 1.
4. Ibid., p. 31, fig. 13.
5. Paul Joannides, Michelangelo and his influence, Drawings from Windsor Castle, Exhibition Catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington, p. 14, under no. 4, fig. 42.
6. Heidi Josepha Hornik, Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio (1503-1577) and the reception of Mannerism in Florence, The Pennsylvania State University, 1990 (photostatic copy in the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence, inv.no. J9448gl), vol. I, pp.250-252, nos. 26-28, vol. II, pp. 502-507, figs. 34-36.
7. Photo Witt Library, Michele Tosini folder.
8. Ibid.
9. Heidi Hornik, Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio..., op.cit., vol. I, p.250, no. 26, vol. II, pp. 502-503, fig. 34; The Artimino provenance, and the Kunsthistorisches photographic reference (no. 7047) given for this picture by Heidi Hornik is, in fact, that of her no. 27 (fig. 35), which corresponds to the image in the K. I. photograph no. 7047. Conversely, the Treviso provenance and reference in Paola Barocchi and Michael Hirst’s article (Le due Cleopatre e le “Teste Divine” di Michelangelo, Casa Buonarroti, Florence, 1989, no. 10), given for no. 27, apply to no. 26, as stated in Barocchi and Hirst.
10. E-mail dated 19 November 2008.
No. 32.
Giandomenico Tiepolo
1. George Knox, see literature
2. George Knox, Raccolta di Teste, Udine, 1970, no. I 3.
3. George Knox, Philosopher….., op.cit., p. 148
4. George Knox, Raccolta di teste, op.cit., illustrated with I 3.
No. 33.
Gaetano Gandolfi
1. Executed in collaboration with the quadraturista, Serafino Barozzi
2. According to legend, a peacock accompanied the translation of the relics from Le Mans to Paderborn and when the procession reached Paderborn the peacock settled on the pinnacle of the Cathedral. However, when the relics entered the Cathedral, the peacock dropped dead. Because of this connection, to this day, a flabellum with peacock feathers is always carried in front of the procession at the annual celebration of the feast of the translation held in Paderborn.
3. E-mail dated 2nd October 2008. See Donatella Biagi Maino ‘Gaetano Gandolfi’ Turin 1995, Cat No. 139, Pl. 153
4. Parte/del muro/ ***/disopra/ In English – Part of the wall above.
No. 34.
Charles Francois Grenier Lacroix, called Lacroix de Marseilles
1. Tableaux de maîtres anciens, exh. Cat. (Paris: Galerie Heim 1956), Nos. 15-16.
2. Annonces, Affiches et Avis Divers, 3 May 1780. 1021.
3. Photo Witt Library, London
No. 35.
Jean Baptiste Pillement
1. Peter Mitchell, Jean Pillement Revalued Apollo, January 1983, p. 49.
No. 36.
Jacques-Louis David
1. Biographie Universelle (Michaud) Ancienne et Moderne, XXIV, Paris, n.d., p. 151, ad vocem.
2. A. Schnapper et al, in Jacques-David 1748-1825, exhibition catalogue (Louvre and Versailles, 1989- 1990), Paris 1989, pp. 4 84-85, nos. 213-214, illustrated in colour and figs. 134 and 135.
3. Sotheby’s, Sale, London, 19 June 1990, Lot 10.
4. Schnapper, op.cit., pp. 484-85, no. 213, illustrated in colour..
5. Cf., note 2.
6. Ibid.
7. Schnapper, op. cit., pp. 474-77, no., 206, illustrated in colour.
8. Ibid., pp. 473-74, no. 205, illustrated in black and white..
9. P. Bordes, in Jacques-Louis David/Empire to Exile, exhibition catalogue (Sterling and Francine Clark Institute), New Haven/London, 2005, p. 170, no. 20, illustrated.
No. 37.
Théodule-Augustin Ribot
1. Eugène Véron, “Th. Ribot”, L’Art, 1880, pp.160-161.
No. 38.
Guglielmo Ciardi
1. Luigi Menegazzi, Guglielmo Ciardi, Soncino ed., 1991, p.25.
No. 39.
Giovanni Boldini
1. B. Doria, Giovanni Boldini, catalogo generale dagli Archivi Boldini, Milan, 2000, no. 287, illustrated in colour.
2. Ibid., no. 285, illustrated in colour.
3. Ibid., no. 284, illustrated.
No. 40.
Théo Van Rysselberghe
1. Théo Van Rysselberghe, Exhibition catalogue, 2006, Brussels, Centre for Fine Arts, Illustrated p.85.
| BENSO,Giulio: no. 36 |
| BLOEMAERT,Abraham: no. 34 |
| BOLDINI, Giovanni: no. 108 |
| CALDER, Alexander: no. 76 |
| CIARDI, Guglielmo: no. 106 |
| DAVID, Jacques-Louis: no. 100 |
| DECAMPS, Alexandre-Gabriel: no. 58 |
| FRANCO, Battista: no. 18 |
| GANDOLFI, Gaetano: no. 94 |
| GUERCINO, Francesco Barbieri, il: no. 50 |
| HOLSTEYN, Pieter, the Elder: no. 11 |
| JORDAENS, Jacob: no. 15 |
| LACROIX, Charles-François Grenier: no. 34 |
| LARIONOV, Mikhail Fedorovich: no. 27 |
| LHOTE, André: no. 26 |
| LOIR, Luigi: no. 23 |
| MACCHIETTI, Girolamo: no. 30 |
| PARMIGIANINO, Francesco Mazzola, il: no. 3 |
| PERINO DEL VAGA: no. 2 |
| PILLEMENT, Jean Baptiste: no. 98 |
| PINO, Marco: no. 26 |
| PUVIS DE CHAVANNES, Pierre: no. 21 |
| RIBOT, Théodule-Augustin: nos 19, 104 |
| ROMANO, Giulio: no. 4 |
| RUBENS, Sir Peter Paul: no. 13 |
| SALLAERT, Anthonis: no. 12 |
| SAVOLDO, Giovanni Girolamo: no. 1 |
| SIGNAC, Paul: no. 70 |
| STEVENS, Alfred: no. 22 |
| TIEPOLO, Giandomenico: nos. 17-18, 32 |
| TINTORETTO, Jacopo Comin, il: no. 29 |
| TOSINI, Michele: no. 31 |
| VAN DYCK, Sir Anthony: no. 14 |
| VANNI, Francesco: no. 30 |
| VAN RYSSELBERGHE, Théo: no. 40 |
| ZUCCARO, Taddeo: no. 22 |
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
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