Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Sculpture on Display in 16th-century Rome

Maarten van Heemskerck
Statue Court of the Belvedere at the Vatican
ca. 1532-33
drawing
British Museum

The most famous antique sculpture collection in Rome in the early 1500s was in the Belvedere Courtyard at the Vatican. In Maarten van Heemskerck's drawing above, the colossal reclining statues of the Tiber and the Nile face each other on matching pedestals, while the Laocoön is discernible in the distance, within a niche. One of several similar statue courts in Roman private houses can be seen below in an engraving based on a drawing also from the 1530s.

Dirk Coornhert after Maarten van Heemskerck
Statue Court of the Casa Sassi, Rome 
1553
engraving
British Museum

"The collection belonged to Egidio and Fabio Sassi, and their house was in the modern via del Governo Vecchio. Heemskerck would have made his drawing when in Rome 1532-36. The collection  was sold to Ottavio Farnese in 1546, and most of it is now in the museum in Naples." – from British Museum curator's notes

Maarten van Heemskerck
Studies after Antique Statues in the Sassi Collection
1530s
drawing
British Museum

Maarten van Heemskerck
Studies after Antique Statues in the Sassi Collection
1530s
drawing
British Museum

Jan de Bisschop after Maarten van Heemskerck
Seven Draped Antique Female Statues
ca. 1672-89
etching
British Museum

Curators point out that the seven statues joined together on one sheet by Bisschop in the late 17th century (above) were copied from seven individual drawings of the 1530s made in Rome by Maarten van Heemskerck. A long and complex pedigree for each of the seven statues in the Heemskerck drawings is part of the curatorial record. It shows that more restoration came later in almost all cases, and the statues themselves no longer resemble Heemskerck's drawings or Bisschop's subsidiary engraving.

Maarten van Heemskerck
Antique Caryatid of a Satyr 
from the della Valle Collection, Rome
ca. 1532-34
drawing
 Bibliothèque nationale, Paris

Cornelis Bos after Maarten van Heemskerck
Michelangelo's Statue of Bacchus
ca. 1532-56
engraving
British Museum

Wenceslaus Hollar
portrait-bust of artist Maarten van Heemskerck
ca. 1627
etching
British Museum

The following drawings, all from the British Museum, are anonymous. All depict antique sculpture and were made in the same Rome that was contemporary with the deeply influential Maarten van Heemskerck. But their makers are unlikely to find specific identities anytime soon.  

Anonymous artist
Antique Torso
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous artist
Female Herm and Sculpted Angel
ca. 1550
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous artist
Antique Draped Female Statue
16th century
drawing
British Museum
owned in the 17th century by Sir Peter Lely

Anonymous artist
Reclining Statue of the Nile
ca. 1550-1600
drawing
British Museum

 
Anonymous artist
Three Antique Statues
ca. 1550-1600
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous artist
Three Antique Statues
ca. 1550-1600
drawing
British Museum

after Giulio Romano
Six Caryatid-Statues 
16th century
drawing
British Museum