Drawings in Dresden: further newly identified works by Italian masters: Carmen C. Bambach continues her account of recent major discoveries in the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden with a discussion of some remarkable drawings by early-16th-century central Italian artists

Apollo, March, 2008 by Carmen C. Bambach

This essay is a continuation of the article dedicated to Dresden drawings in the January issue of APOLLO, the fruit of a curatorial exchange programme between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden. It focuses primarily on central Italian artists of the 16th century, many of whom laboured under the shadow of Michelangelo. (1)

TWO STANDING FIGURES BY 'JACONE'

More can be added here in regard to the study of two sinuously svelte men standing, which I published with an attribution to 'Jacone' (Jacopo di Giovanni di Francesco; Fig. 1), the marvellously eccentric Florentine draughtsman in the penumbra of Rosso and Michelangelo (and student of Andrea del Sarto), whom Giorgio Vasari called 'molto bizzarro e fantastico'. (2) The basis for my attribution emerges especially from comparisons to the corpus of drawings byJacone, as most recently discussed by Marzia Faietti in 2006. (3) The Dresden sheet was listed by Paul Joannides in his monumental catalogue of 2007 of the Michelangelo drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, among the old copies after the verso of a sheet in the Ashmolean attributed to Michelangelo, without mention of Jacone. (4) The Dresden sheet is better preserved. The Oxford sheet (Ashmolean inv. WA 1846.73), on the other hand, was cut vertically down the centre (to separate the two figures on the verso) and was subsequently joined; it is also greatly cropped around the borders. A third version of this drawing exists in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem, (5) and on my seeing all three drawings first-hand, within a short period of time, some clarification is in order. The nearly mechanical evenness of the contours and modelling, together with the complete reductiveness of the strokes and utter dryness of the Haarlem sheet leave little doubt that it is a straightforward early-16th-century copy, as stated by Carel van Tuyll in 2000. (6) But it is this Haarlem sheet, not the Oxford one, that was mistaken for a Michelangelo, being inscribed 'di Michel Angelo buona Roti' by the so-called 'Bona Roti' collector, who annotated drawings with Michelangelo's surname written as split-up words. (7) The attribution to Michelangelo of even the powerful recto drawing on the Oxford sheet (Ashmolean inv. WA 1846.73), which is stylistically of a kind with the study of three men disputing in the same museum (Ashmolean inv. WA 1846.72), has been challenged - even Sir Karl T. Parker hesitated--but the attribution to the great master has won out. (8) All this makes the relationship between the verso of the Oxford sheet (Ashmolean inv. WA 1846.73) and the Dresden drawing less straightforward than has been stated as regards issues of quality.

In comparison to the Oxford verso, for every line of its interior parallel-hatching the draughtsman of the Dresden sheet (who was obviously accomplished) seems to introduce a few more thickening strokes per passage, while maintaining a tonal balance in the crosshatching. But independently of this fact, the two elongated jagged figural types, sketched with nearly brutal force on the damaged Ashmolean verso and the Dresden drawing, seem overall closer to the ideals of Jacone, rather than Michelangelo. The issues of facture are more complicated, as the pen-and-ink rendering of the draperies in the Ashmolean drawing can readily be compared to that on two securely autograph drawings by Michelangelo also in the museum (Ashmolean inv. WA 1846.70 and WA 1846.71). All these drawings, seen side by side, underline the fundamental differences of approach in the sketch of the two figures with respect to the securely autograph Michelangelos. As stated in my previous article, the Dresden drawing is especially close to Jacone, with its somewhat open contours, long lines of hatching, mode of spare but over-extended cross-hatching and more exaggerated anatomical short-hand notation for heads and ears. It is known that Jacone owned and copied drawings by Michelangelo. The handling of the partly abraded Dresden drawing is relatively free and lively, and is done on some traces of black chalk, while the severely abraded and rejoined Ashmolean sheet may be in too damaged a condition for definitive conclusions.

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'THE TOMB OF POPE PIUS II' BY ANTONIO DA SANGALLO THE YOUNGER OR HIS CIRCLE

A bold outline sketch in pen and ink of the tomb of Pope Pins II once in old St Peter's basilica, and today reinstalled at S Andrea della Valle in Rome, is still housed in the boxes of anonymous drawings (Fig. 2), for it was published in 2006 as by a 'Roman draftsman of ca. 1525', reasonably so. (9) This relatively large sheet, executed somewhat drily, although firmly, over lead-point underdrawing, is inscribed on the bottom storey of the podium in the central panel, 'pius II pont/MAX', and below it at the centre, along the bottom border: 'i[n] s. pietro a roma', revealing the drawing's purpose as a record of the site. The style of draughtsmanship dates this ricordo drawing probably to the 1530s. It can be definitely associated with the circle of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, possibly Bastiano 'Aristotile' da Sangallo, or Giovanni Battista 'Il Gobbo' da Sangallo, if it is not indeed by Antonio the Younger himself.