Saturday, December 2, 2017

Drawings executed between 1620 and 1660

Anonymous artist in Bologna
Seven men on gallows
drawing
ca. 1630
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Inigo Jones
Plumed saddle-horse
ca. 1640
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

"Aristotle considered that poetry must imitate persons of better quality than those of one's time, or else worse, or else of similar quality, and he proved it with the example of painting: because Polygnotus imitated the best, Pauson the worst, and Dionysios the similar. There is no doubt that many others among the ancients used these approaches, and indeed, Apelles, Zeuxis, Timanthes, Parrhasius, and others imitated the best.  Pliny recounts that Piraeicus gained the greatest glory by imitating base things like barbers' and cobblers' shops as well as asses, food and the like.  Callicles also imitated mean things; Calates painted little panels of comic subjects; Famulus the Roman was esteemed in the painting of humble things; but Antiphilos imitated both the best and the worst.  Quintilian affirms that Demetrius, though a sculptor, followed similitude so much that he had no regard for beauty.  Now, in our times Raphael and the Roman school of the century mentioned above, following the manners of the ancient statues, have imitated the best more successfully than others.  Bassano was a Piraeicus in depicting the worst.  And many of the moderns have developed similar things to what they saw, including Caravaggio, who was so excellent in coloring and who can be compared to Demetrius because he left behind the idea of beauty in order to follow similitude entirely."

 Giovanni Battista Agucchi, from his Treatise on Painting (1646) translated and quoted in Italy in the Baroque edited by Brendan Dooley (New York: Garland, 1995)

Alessandro Algardi
Man with arm outstretched, pointing downwards
before 1654
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Sisto Badalocchio
St Sebastian
before 1647
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Pier Francesco Mola
Putti in clouds
ca. 1651-52
drawing-for-fresco
British Museum

attributed to Giovanni Lanfranco
Virgin and Child with saint appearing to a monk
ca. 1634-46
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Giovanni Lanfranco
Study for lunette - Virgin and Child with St Joseph and angel
ca. 1639-41
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Alessandro Maganza
Soldier with goblet
before 1630
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Pier Francesco Mazzuchelli (Il Morazzone)
King David with Angels
ca. 1625-26
wash drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Camillo Procaccini
Transfiguration
before 1629
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Andrea Sacchi
Studies of a man
1640s
drawing
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Antonio Tempesta
Ostrich Hunt
before 1630
drawing
British Museum

Ferdinand Bol
Man in his study wearing Oriental costume
ca. 1635-40
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

attributed to Francesco Borromini
Study for entablature of Baldacchino at St Peter's, Rome
with heraldic Barberini sun

ca. 1624
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

"Clearly the twisted columns [of the bronze Baldacchino at St. Peter's in Rome] were meant to recall the Early Christian tradition, and perhaps also Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem as it was then believed to have looked.  Otherwise it is unlikely that the columns had any special symbolic significance.  As for their ornamentation, the vine tendrils on the antique columns had been replaced by laurels, which Urban VIII as a devotee of literature had taken as his personal emblem, and among the laurels can be seen his ubiquitous bees.  The imposts of the columns boast another of Urban's emblems, the "sun in splendour" used in heraldry as a symbol for justice and here alluding to that most princely of the virtues.  It is both strange and significant that on this monument over the tomb of the Apostle Peter, the ancient Christian symbols have had to make way for the heraldic charges and devices of the Barberini family."

 Torgil Magnuson, from Rome in the Age of Bernini (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1982)  

attributed to Francesco Borromini
Study for canopy of Baldacchino in St Peter's, Rome
ornamented with heraldic Barberini bees

ca. 1624
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor