Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola PARMIGIANINO
(Parma 1503 - Casalmaggiore 1540)
Study of Male Nudes, One Tied to a Tree
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, with traces of framing lines in brown ink at the left edge.
A study of a reclining male nude drawn in black chalk on the verso.
182 x 246 mm. (7 1/8 x 9 3/4 in.)
Watermark: Partial circular.
A study of a reclining male nude drawn in black chalk on the verso.
182 x 246 mm. (7 1/8 x 9 3/4 in.)
Watermark: Partial circular.
The study of a male nude tied to a tree on the recto of the present sheet is recorded in a chiaroscuro woodcut of Saint Sebastian, dated 1723, by Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder. During Parmigianino’s lifetime and later in the 16th century, and again in the 18th century, several of his drawings were reproduced in the form of prints or chiaroscuro woodcuts. A large number of the later chiaroscuro woodcuts were produced by the 18th century Venetian artist, engraver, critic and collector Count Anton (or Antonio) Maria Zanetti (1680-1757), who assembled a large collection of some 130 drawings by Parmigianino, most of which he acquired from the Arundel collection in London in the early 1720s.
As the scholar A. E. Popham has noted of Zanetti’s chiaroscuro woodcuts after his Parmigianino drawings, ‘His object was not to produce facsimiles, but prints comparable to those which had been made in the sixteenth century by the first practitioners of chiaroscuro woodcut, Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trento and the rest, whose technique he prided himself on having revived. He was capable of adding limbs or even heads to unfinished drawings as well as backgrounds of his own invention…though on occasion he produced reasonably accurate facsimiles. It can be assumed that the majority of them are based on genuine drawings by Parmigianino.’ The other figure group on the recto of this sheet, a study of a male nude supporting another, is very close to two similar figures in a drawing of seven gods and three goddesses in the British Museum.
The black chalk drawing of a male nude on the verso of this sheet appears to be a study of the crucified Christ. However, it may be noted that the legs of the figure are very close to those in a lost drawing by Parmigianino that is recorded in a later etching by Francesco Rosaspina (c.1762-1841). The print was part of an album of printed facsimiles of Parmigianino drawings, all by Rosaspina, that was acquired in 1919 by the British Museum. Parmigianino’s lost original drawing was a study for the legs of Nero, seated on a throne, in a composition of The Martyrdom of Saint Paul of c.1525-1527 that was the basis for a chiaroscuro woodcut by Antonio da Trento. A somewhat similar study of legs in also found in a chalk study by Parmigianino of two seated figures in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice.
As the scholar A. E. Popham has noted of Zanetti’s chiaroscuro woodcuts after his Parmigianino drawings, ‘His object was not to produce facsimiles, but prints comparable to those which had been made in the sixteenth century by the first practitioners of chiaroscuro woodcut, Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trento and the rest, whose technique he prided himself on having revived. He was capable of adding limbs or even heads to unfinished drawings as well as backgrounds of his own invention…though on occasion he produced reasonably accurate facsimiles. It can be assumed that the majority of them are based on genuine drawings by Parmigianino.’ The other figure group on the recto of this sheet, a study of a male nude supporting another, is very close to two similar figures in a drawing of seven gods and three goddesses in the British Museum.
The black chalk drawing of a male nude on the verso of this sheet appears to be a study of the crucified Christ. However, it may be noted that the legs of the figure are very close to those in a lost drawing by Parmigianino that is recorded in a later etching by Francesco Rosaspina (c.1762-1841). The print was part of an album of printed facsimiles of Parmigianino drawings, all by Rosaspina, that was acquired in 1919 by the British Museum. Parmigianino’s lost original drawing was a study for the legs of Nero, seated on a throne, in a composition of The Martyrdom of Saint Paul of c.1525-1527 that was the basis for a chiaroscuro woodcut by Antonio da Trento. A somewhat similar study of legs in also found in a chalk study by Parmigianino of two seated figures in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice.
Giorgio Vasari praises Parmigianino as, literally, a born draughtsman (‘fusse nato, si puo dire, con i penelli in mano’), and his appreciation of the artist’s drawings was shared by collectors and connoisseurs well into the 17th and 18th centuries. (The 18th century English collector Jonathan Richardson Senior, in his An Essay on the Theory of Painting, published in 1725, noted that ‘There is a Spirit, and Fire, a Freedom, and Delicacy in the Drawings of Giulio Romano, Polydoro, Parmeggiano, Battista Franco, &c. which are not to be seen in their Paintings.’) One of the most prolific draughtsmen of the Cinquecento, Parmigianino produced everything from quick sketches to figural and compositional studies, as well as landscapes, portrait studies and finished presentation drawings. Furthermore, as A. E. Popham observed, Parmigianino ‘obviously delighted in the immediate effects which his pen or chalk could produce on the paper...He loved to experiment in every sort of technique, pen and ink and wash, both on plain and coloured paper, with or without white heightening, red chalk, black chalk, water colour, metal-point on prepared surfaces. This variety of techniques is a measure of the graphic tendency of his mind, of his extreme interest in the mechanics of drawing...He was a natural, as well as indefatigable, draughtsman.’
Almost a thousand drawings by Parmigianino survive today, many of which were copied or engraved. The elegant, graceful style expressed in his drawings and designs for prints and chiaroscuro woodcuts was to prove extremely influential on a later generation of artists, including Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli and Jacopo Bertoia in Parma, Andrea Schiavone in Venice, and Nicolò dell’Abate and Francesco Primaticcio in Bologna and, later, Fontainebleau.
Provenance
Possibly Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel, and by descent to his son, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford
Probably Count Antonio Maria Zanetti, Venice
Thence by descent until c.1787
Galerie de Bayser, Paris
Private collection, New York.
Probably Count Antonio Maria Zanetti, Venice
Thence by descent until c.1787
Galerie de Bayser, Paris
Private collection, New York.
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