Drawing of the Month #17 (US)
Saturday, 1 February 2025. Newsletter 17.
Lelio Orsi (1508/11-1587)
The Walk to Emmaus, ca. 1565-75
Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white opaque watercolour on paper prepared with a light brown wash. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1938.257
Dr Oliver Tostmann, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, has kindly chosen our seventeenth drawing of the month.
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford is perhaps best known for its dazzling European paintings. Its collection of drawings has remained much less studied. This Walk to Emmaus by the Emilian painter and draftsman Lelio Orsi is one of my all-time favourites. Its artful simplicity and the broad use of wash make this sheet particularly alluring. The work is part of the current exhibition Paper, Color, Line: European Master Drawings, which features some sixty highlights on paper from the Wadsworth’s collection, spanning from the early 1500s to the 1990s.
Orsi is considered highly individual, even eccentric, today. He worked mostly in Reggio Emilia and Novellara, and thanks in part to his travels, he was perfectly aware of his contemporaries. The visionary and didactic aspects of the biblical Walk to Emmaus must have appealed to the artist, who specialised in such imagery throughout his career. Thus, it is not a surprise that he chose this scene, even though it was not popular among his Italian contemporaries.
Here, Orsi captures the evening of Christ’s resurrection, when Cleophas and another disciple traveled to the village of Emmaus. Joined by the risen Christ, the group emerges out of a sea of darkness as they walk on a rocky path. The companions are fully absorbed by the presence of the mysterious stranger in their midst, listening to his news about the recent resurrection of the Lord. It is not until later that evening that Christ reveals his true identity to them.
With little interest in the setting, Orsi rendered the three figures frontally, in a manner reminiscent of Michelangelo. To convey the moment of astonishment and wonder, he worked out poses, gestures, and drapery with diligent pen strokes. Orsi paid close attention to the guise of the figures, rendering a variety of materials and textures in their garments, broad brimmed hats, and robust boots. It is possible that his own experiences as a traveler left their impact on this design.
A general attention to small and intricate forms that comes close to the sensitivity of a miniaturist is balanced on this sheet by broad colouring and dramatic lighting. The brown wash served Orsi as a mid-tone to work down the shadows and work up the highlights. Typical for the artist, he created at least three more drawings that relate to the Hartford sheet. They were all preparatory studies for an oil painting that is now at the National Gallery in London. The recently discovered watermark on the Hartford Walk compounds the argument that the artist worked on the group during his later years, between 1565 and 1575.
Though Orsi is well appreciated, he is far from being a household name. Thus, it seems surprising that the Wadsworth not only holds this masterful drawing in its collection, but also one of his easel paintings. The institution acquired the Walk in 1938, two years after it had bought his Noli me tangere. The Wadsworth, therefore, is one of the few museums that is able to equally present Orsi’s mastery as a painter and draftsman.
This drawing is currently on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, in ‘Paper, Color, Line : European Master Drawings’ April 27.
