SEBALD BEHAM

Nuremberg 1500-1550 Frankfurt-am-Main

Recto: A Putto Beside a Flaming Urn

Verso: Four Studies of Men’s Heads

Pen and black ink.

149 x 158 mm. (5 7/8 x 6 1/4 in.)

Sebald Beham and his younger brother Barthel, together with Heinrich Aldegrever, Georg Pencz and other German printmakers active in the first half of the 16th century, were known as the ‘Little Masters’, due to the small size of much of their work. Both Beham brothers are thought to have studied with Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg, and Sebald produced his first prints in 1518. In his lifetime, he produced some 270 engravings and etchings, and designed over a thousand woodcuts. Drawings by Sebald Beham are, however, relatively uncommon. Only a few may be related to his prints, and this double-sided drawing is one of these. 

Both sides of this fine drawing are preparatory studies for two woodcuts used as illustrations for Das Kunst und Lehrbüchlin Sebalden Behams, a treatise on design and draughtsmanship written and illustrated by Beham. First published by Christian Egenolph in Frankfurt in 1546, the book was illustrated with twenty-six woodcuts by Beham; it proved very popular, and was reprinted several times until an eighth edition in 1605. The related woodcut of the putto with a flaming urn in the Kunst und Lehrbüchlin is signed with Beham’s monogram and dated 1546, while the woodcut of the four male heads is signed with the artist’s monogram, but undated.

A stylistically comparable drawing by Beham of a putto holding a sickle and a bunch of grapes, dated 1542, is in the British Museum.

GIULIO CAMPI

Cremona c.1508-1573 Cremona

A Putto Carrying a Basket of Fruit

Red chalk, with touches of white heightening. Squared for transfer in black chalk.

Inscribed Parmigiano at the lower right.

177 x 102 mm. (7 x 4 in.)

One of a Cremonese family of painters, Giulio Campi probably received his initial artistic training with his father Galeazzo Campi, and worked mainly as a fresco painter in the churches of his native town, as well as elsewhere in Northern Italy. This drawing is a preparatory study for part of the decoration of the abbey church of San Sigismondo, just outside Cremona, painted by Campi in 1542. The putto in this drawing appears as part of the decorative border on the right hand side of the transept, adjacent to a fresco of Saint Augustine. Campi’s frescoes at San Sigismondo, with their combination of Mannerist elements inspired by Giulio Romano, Parmigianino and Pordenone, were to have a significant impact on the Cremonese painters of the succeeding generation. The drawing also displays the particular influence on Campi of Parmigianino, to whom the sheet was in fact once attributed.

Castello di Cigoli 1559-1613 Rome

Recto: Study of a Male Nude, Seen from Behind

Verso: Study of a Draped Figure, Striding to the Left

Red chalk. Mount lines in brown ink at the left edge.

Inscribed Cigoli in brown ink at the lower right and numbered 2 in a box in brown ink at the upper left.

413 x 282 mm. (16 1/4 x 11 1/8 in.)

As a draughtsman, Lodovico Cigoli has long been greatly admired by his collectors and connoisseurs. The historian and biographer Filippo Baldinucci, an avid collector of the artist’s drawings, wrote of Cigoli that ‘he drew constantly, and his drawings, done in a style that is his own, display...[a] spontaneity and appealing delicacy of touch, the perfection of the whole and knowledge of anatomy, a certain immediacy and spirit, never known to me except in those of the great Michelangelo...’ Baldinucci credits Cigoli with reestablishing the principles of life drawing among the painters of Florence, and his studies from life, invariably executed in red chalk, are an integral part of his graphic output.

Neither of the figure studies on the recto and verso of this splendid drawing can be definitively related to a surviving painting by Cigoli. Miles Chappell has, however, tentatively suggested that the male nude may be a first idea for the pose of the angel in Cigoli’s altarpiece of The Resurrection, painted in 1590 for the Palazzo Pitti.

PIETRO FACCINI

Bologna c.1562-1602 Bologna

Study of a Seated Youth, Leaning to the Right

Red chalk, with stumping. The upper corners cropped.

Inscribed Coreggio at the lower left.

237 x 330 mm. (9 3/8 x 13 in.).

The attribution of this beautiful sheet to Faccini was first proposed by Babette Bohn in 1991, and was subsequently confirmed by the late Mario di Giampaolo. The drawing shows the influence of Annibale Carracci in the use of soft, stumped red chalk, and probably dates to the period of Faccini’s study with Annibale in the late 1580’s, when both artists were inspired by the drawings of Correggio. The Correggesque quality of this drawing is further evidence of its early date; indeed, it was long attributed to Correggio himself, as evidenced by the inscription at the lower left. The drawing is, in fact, inspired by the figure of an ephebus in Correggio’s fresco of The Assumption of the Virgin on the cupola of the Duomo in Parma, painted in the second half of the 1520’s. The soft, sensuous application of stumped red chalk to depict the play of light and shade on the nude form - note, for example, the way in which the artist has depicted the shadow of the youth’s arm as it falls across the side of his chest - is characteristic of Pietro Faccini’s chalk draughtsmanship of the 1580’s.

PIETRO FACCINI

PAOLO FARINATI

RIDOLFO GHIRLANDAIO

Florence 1483-1561 Florence

The Virgin and Child

Pen and brown ink, the outlines pricked for transfer. Laid down on an 18th century English mount.

112 x 57 mm. (4 3/8 x 2 1/4 in.)

Born in Florence in 1483, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio was the son of the eminent painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Vasari noted that he studied with Fra Bartolommeo, and indeed the influence of the latter is evident in much of his early work. As an independent artist, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio enjoyed a long and highly successful career, with a number of significant public commissions in Florence. He had a large and busy studio in Florence and produced altarpieces and frescoes for such Florentine churches as Santa Maria Novella, Santo Spirito and Santa Maria degli Angeli, as well as altarpieces for several towns outside Florence.

Drawings by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio are rare, and only a handful of drawings have been firmly attributed to him. The present sheet would appear to be an early work by the artist, datable to the first decade of the 16th century. With fine penwork applied with regular hatching and crosshatching, this small drawing is typical of the artist’s draughtsmanship, which ultimately derives from the example of his father Domenico’s drawings. The present sheet also displays the particular influence of the pen drawings of Fra Bartolommeo, to whom it was once attributed. Indeed, the drawing is derived from a pen and ink study of the Virgin and Child by Fra Bartolommeo in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, which in turn was used for the figure of the Virgin in two early paintings by the Frate.

A stylistically comparable pen drawing by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio of A Bishop and a Priest, with the same Richardson and later provenance as the present sheet, is in the collection of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. It has been suggested that both drawings may have been trimmed from the same sheet.

JACOPO LIGOZZI

Verona c.1550-1627 Florence

Ocnus: An Allegory of the Futility of Labour

Pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white, over an underdrawing in black chalk, on blue paper. The outlines of the main figure indented for transfer and the verso washed red.

200 x 151 mm. (7 7/8 x 6 in.)

Although born and raised in Verona, Jacopo Ligozzi spent almost the entirety of his long career in Florence, where he arrived in 1577. Ligozzi worked as court artist for four successive Medici Grand Dukes, from Francesco I to Ferdinando II, executing numerous designs for tapestries, furniture, glass, pietra dura and metalwork. According to Medici inventories, however, much of his work took the form of small-scale paintings, often of a devotional or emblematic nature. Ligozzi was a superbly gifted draughtsman, and was esteemed as such by his contemporaries. His drawings are invariably highly finished, often heightened with touches of gold, and combine a meticulous technique with a miniaturist’s attention to detail.

In its use of blue paper and its stylistic relationship with late 16th century Veronese and Venetian draughtsmanship, the present sheet may tentatively be dated to the early part of Ligozzi’s career, while he was working in Verona or shortly after his arrival in Florence in 1577. The unusual subject of this drawing derives from an ancient Greek painting by Polygnotus of the mythological character of Ocnus (or Oknos); a figure symbolic of futility, or unending labour. Ocnus was condemned to spend eternity weaving a rope of straw which, in turn, was eaten by a donkey almost as fast as it is made. Many of Ligozzi’s highly finished drawings were executed as independent works of art, and this may be true of the present sheet. However, the partially incised contours of the figure, and the red wash applied to the verso of the sheet, would suggest that the drawing may have been preparatory to a print, possibly a chiaroscuro woodcut. A handful of allegorical drawings by Ligozzi were in fact reproduced as chiaroscuro woodcuts in c.1585 by the Mantuan engraver Andrea Andreani (c.1546-1623), and the artist’s technique, with its emphasis on strong lines and tonal contrasts, lent itself well to the particular demands of the chiaroscuro medium.

Ligozzi’s reputation as a designer of innovative allegorical compositions was well established early in his career and, as one scholar has recently noted, he ‘produced (and was most probably the originator of) ingenious allegorical compositions…The content of Ligozzi’s drawings is often very unusual and their sources are extremely unexpected.’

JACOPO NEGRETTI, called PALMA GIOVANE

Venice c.1548-1628 Venice

The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Pen and brown ink and brown wash, with touches of white heightening. Made up at the corners and laid down.

235 x 261 mm. (9 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.)

Palma Giovane was an inexhaustible draughtsman, working primarily in pen and ink, and more drawings by him survive than by any other Venetian artist of the Cinquecento. Palma seems to have drawn for pleasure as much as to prepare his paintings, and many of his drawings cannot be related to known works. Although no related painting is known, the octagonal shape of this drawing would suggest that it may have been a preparatory study for a ceiling design. Palma Giovane treated the subject of The Fall of the Rebel Angels in at least two paintings, though both are different in composition and format from the present sheet. A painting in the Galleria Borghese in Rome is horizontal in format, while another painting of The Fall of the Rebel Angels in a private collection in Bergamo, though still dissimilar in composition, is closer in shape to the present sheet.

POMPEO PEDEMONTE

Mantua c.1515-1592 Mantua

A Design for a Facade of a Triumphal Arch or Temporary Structure, Decorated with Reliefs of the Labours of Hercules, Statues and Trophies

Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over traces of an underdrawing in black chalk.

Signed with the artist’s monogram PPAM in a heart with a cross above at the lower centre of the sheet.

325 x 491 mm. (12 3/4 x 19 3/8 in.)

The son of the Mantuan painter Giovanni Francesco Pedemonte, the painter and architect Pompeo Pedemonte worked for the Dukes of Mantua. This large drawing, which bears Pedemonte’s monogram PPAM (for ‘Pompeo Pedemonte Architectus Mantovanus’), may be compared to a group of sixteen drawings in the Civico Gabinetto dei Disegni in Milan, ten of which are signed with the same distinctive monogram.

Florence 1501-1547 Rome

Caesar on the River Aoös

Pen and brown ink and brown wash, extensively heightened with white.

Inscribed Cesar Ini…[M]iro il fiume…I aniene(?) in the lower margin and, in a different hand (Lanier?), Polidoro in the lower right margin.

137 x 152 mm. (5 3/8 x 6 in.)

Characterized by considerable inventiveness, range and skill, Perino del Vaga’s drawings mark him as one of the most gifted draughtsmen of the 16th century in Italy. Giorgio Vasari rated him very highly (‘the best and most finished draughtsman that there was among all who were drawing in Rome’), and noted that he drew constantly. His drawings range from sheets of rapid sketches to elaborate and highly finished figure and composition studies. The majority of Perino’s surviving drawings are studies in pen and ink; a medium the artist seems to have preferred by virtue of its fluidity and expressiveness. His drawings often serve as the only record of large-scale damaged or destroyed commissions, and relatively few examples can be related to surviving works.

This small drawing was first attributed to Perino del Vaga by Paul Joannides in 2000, and published by him four years later. The drawing, which would appear to depict a scene from Roman history, is unconnected to any surviving painting or fresco by the artist. A closely related drawing appears on the recto of a double-sided sheet of small compositional sketches and figure studies by Perino del Vaga formerly in the Reynolds, Calando and Lebel collections and today in a private collection in Paris. The lower sketch on the recto of the Pébereau sheet is clearly preparatory for the composition of this drawing, and the two are very similar in size and scale. The present sheet must have been worked up from the preliminary sketch on the Pébereau drawing, although there may have been other, intervening studies. While the sketch of Caesar on the River Aoös on the Pébereau drawing shows Perino at his lightest and most fluent, the present sheet is a carefully worked-up modello, with strong and decisive line-work. The forms are carefully modelled with white heightening, delicately and precisely applied with the tip of the brush, which serves to emphasize the relief nature of the composition. The overall effect is inspired by Roman sarcophagus reliefs, and it would seem likely that this drawing was intended for a relief-like composition, probably in grisaille.

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