Monday, January 8, 2018

Drawings by Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) and Followers

Agostino Carracci
Nude woman, half-length
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

BEATRICE:
                                      "Pervert not truth,
Orsino.  You remember where we held
That conversation; nay, we see the spot
Even from this cypress; two long years are passed
Since, on an April midnight, underneath
The moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine,
I did confess to you my secret mind."

 from The Cenci, a verse drama by P.B. Shelley (1819)

attributed to Agostino Carracci
Group of woman, possibly for The Finding of Moses
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Agostino Carracci
Studies of standing male nude
before 1592
drawing
British Museum

Agostino Carracci
Sheet of sketches with landscape
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Agostino Carracci
Man in cloak from behind
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

Agostino Carracci
Study for engraved arms of a Cardinal
ca. 1594-95
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Agostino Carracci
Wing-headed monster, possibly design for door-knocker
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

Agostino Carracci
Profile-portrait of Pope Clement VIII
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

Pope Clement VIII (Ippolito Aldobrandini, 1536-1605) was best known in his own day as a clever manipulator of international politics. But he is mainly remembered by posterity for violent authoritarianism, having ordered the executions in Rome of the young patrician Beatrice Cenci (in 1599) and the philosopher Giordano Bruno (in 1600). Both figures have remained martyrs to bigotry in popular imagination, their stories told and retold by historians and poets, with Clement as presiding villain.

Agostino Carracci
Virgin and Child
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

Agostino Carracci
Christ and the woman taken in adultery
 ca. 1593
drawing
British Museum

"A study [directly above] for Agostino's painting, formerly in the Palazzo Sampieri, Bologna, now in the Brera, Milan.  This was Agostino's contribution to three painted overdoors (1593-5), all now in the Brera, Milan, treating the three female sinners of the Gospel.  The others in the series were executed by his brother Annibale and his cousin Lodovico."

 curator's notes from the British Museum

attributed to Agostino Carracci
Head of bearded man
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

follower of Agostino Carracci
Head of goat
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

follower of Agostino Carracci
Queen and attendants kneeling and praying
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

BEATRICE:

Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here
As my accuser? Ha! Wilt thou be he,
Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge,
What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name;
Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.
What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what.
And therefore on the chance that it may be
Some evil, will ye kill us?

 from The Cenci, a verse drama by P.B. Shelley (1819)

follower of Agostino Carracci
Seated woman with snake on arm, looking in mirror
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum

follower of Agostino Carracci
St Jerome
 before 1602
drawing
British Museum