August 2024
Thursday, August 1
Trois Crayons (French, "three crayons") The technique of drawing with black, white and red chalks (à trois crayons) on a paper of middle tone, for example mid-blue or buff. It was particularly popular in early and mid-18th century France with artists such as Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. (Clarke, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms)
Coming Up
Dear all,
Greetings from Trois Crayons HQ, where the sun is at last shining through the office windows here in London and thawing through the thick British clouds. We hope that readers are enjoying their holidays, wherever they may be, and that if they have already finished their pile of books, then this newsletter may provide a little drawing-related distraction.
For this month’s edition, we have picked out a number of ongoing and upcoming exhibitions, continued our discussion on blue paper with Alexa McCarthy, and Emma P. Holter has reviewed ‘500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum’ at The Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College. We recommend our customary selection of literary and audio highlights, and, as ever, you can test your inner connoisseur with the real or fake section at the end.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
NEWS
In Germany, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Weimar, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, have jointly acquired Caspar David Friedrich’s, ‘Karlsruher Skizzenbuch’. The sketchbook is now on display in Berlin until August 16, as part of the exhibition ‘(Un)seen Stories’. At the Albertinum in Dresden and the Kupferstich-Kabinett, two further exhibitions on Friedrich, ‘Caspar David Friedrich. Where it all started’, open this month on the 24th. These exhibitions will be followed by the Metropolitan Museum’s show in early 2025, ‘Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature’.
In the United States, The Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired drawings by Gustave Moreau and Maarten van Heemskerck. In France, the Parisian dealership, Sabrier and Paunet has announced the sale of a drawing by Bonaventure Louis Prévost to the Metropolitan Museum. The Cabinet des Estampes et Dessins, Musée de Strasbourg, has announced the acquisition of a drawing by Bartholomäus Hopfer from Nicolas Schwed. Poncelin de Raucourt Fine Arts is hosting an online exhibition, ‘Divine Femininity’, which runs until September 20. In Belgium, the KBR has announced the acquisition of a drawing by Leon Spilliaert. In Poland, the Royal Castle in Warsaw presented a newly acquired drawing by Raphael back in March, the first work by the artist in Poland since the disappearance of Portrait of a Young Man in World War 2. An exhibition devoted to Raphael will follow at the castle in the autumn.
Photo: The “Karlsruhe Sketchbook” by Caspar David Friedrich © SPK / Liesa Johannssen/photothek.de
In Switzerland, the art historian Silvano Vinceti has recently presented his findings on a drawing attributed to Cesare da Sesto, which is thought to have been inscribed by Leonardo da Vinci. You can watch the press conference and analyse Vinceti’s explanation here. No doubt this discovery will spark debate. Another conference for which the recording is now online is ‘Pose, Power, Practice: New Perspectives on Life Drawing’, which took place at the Courtauld Institute back in June.
Two job vacancies have been posted that may be of interest to readers. The Yale Center for British Art is looking for a Postgraduate Research Associate in Prints and Drawings. Applications close on August 12. The Royal Collection Trust is looking for a Senior Paper Conservator. Applications close on August 4.
Some sad news has also reached us this month with the passing of Alastair Laing, an art historian known to many for his work on François Boucher. Neil Jeffares has written a touching tribute on his website, and an obituary was recently published in The Telegraph. Bernhard Schnackenburg, former director of the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Kassel, has also passed away this month. A tribute has been posted on the CODART website.
EVENTS
This month we have picked out a selection of new and previously unhighlighted events from the UK and from further afield. For a more complete overview of ongoing exhibitions and talks, please visit our Events page.
UK
Wordlwide
reviews
500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum (16 Feb – 23 Jun)
The Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College
Reviewed by Emma P. Holter (Tyler School of Art and Architecture)
On view from February 16th to June 23rd, “500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum,” highlighted the breadth and depth of one of the most significant university collections in the United States. Since the Princeton University Art Museum’s closure for renovation in 2020, there have been very few occasions to view the collection of works on paper in person. With the anticipated re-opening of the museum in 2025, the opportunity arose to showcase gems from Princeton’s drawing collection at another collegiate art museum on the opposite side of the country. The exhibition was mounted at The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, California and featured 95 works from Princeton’s collection of nearly one thousand Italian drawings.
Spread across two rooms, the thematic organization of the show permitted an appealing and instructive juxtaposition of drawings from a wide chronological scope. The selection of themes was evidently geared towards an undergraduate audience and offered an in-depth look at the fundamentals of drawing—including paper supports, types of media, function, collecting history, and connoisseurship. A thread running through the exhibition labels and didactics emphasized how fundamental drawing is to the artistic process: from Donato Credi’s primi pensieri sketches in pen and ink for his Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, to Giovanni Battista Naldini’s deft and highly finished drawings after Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sculptures of Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici.
Interestingly, the ‘Collecting & Connoisseurship’ subsection showcased drawings that have been reattributed since entering the Princeton University Art Museum. The most notable of these were two sheets now given to Parmigianino, one of which has recently been linked to the artist’s frescoes in San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, and the other that originally had entered the collection with an attribution to Pordenone. Likewise, the exhibition highlighted the strengths in Princeton’s collection of drawings by Guercino, Giambattista Tiepolo and Luca Cambiaso. A final section of the show was dedicated to these three painters, as well as a Princeton alumnus and university art museum benefactor. The collector Dan Fellows Platt presciently took advantage of the relatively affordability of their drawings and purchased them in large numbers during the early twentieth century, at a time when their art had fallen out of favour. Twelve of the fifteen sheets on display in this section were gifted by Fellows Platt. Standouts in this group included Tiepolo’s delicate chalk and wash allegorical drawing of Faith, Hope and Charity, and Cambiaso’s dynamic red chalk preliminary drawing for The Return of Ulysses.
The themes of the exhibition were demarcated by section labels, while individual object labels and tombstone information were reproduced in a printed booklet available at the museum’s front desk. The absence of object labels on the walls of the exhibition encouraged viewers to be attentive to the formal qualities of the drawings and the visual storytelling created through thoughtful and astute juxtapositions. This curatorial choice permitted the inclusion of two portrait drawings attributed to Amedeo Modigliani, which would have otherwise seemed out of place, considering the evident strengths of the collection in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century Italian drawings.
The show presented an exceptional opportunity for audiences in southern California to study the renowned collection of Italian drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, leaving viewers anticipating the future displays of works on paper in Princeton’s newly renovated galleries, which are estimated to open in September 2025.
View more drawings from the exhibition here.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), Seated Male Nude, ca. 1618–24. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Laura P . Hall Memorial Fund and Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund (2005-128)
Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) (1591-1666), Study for Queen Semiramis Receiving News of the Revolt of Babylon, 1624. Princeton University Art Museum. Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895 (x1948-727)
Luca Cambiaso (1527–1585), Study for the Return of Ulysses, ca. 1565. Princeton University Art Museum. Laura P. Hall Memorial Collection (x1946-155)
DEMYSTIFYING DRAWINGS
What’s the big deal with blue paper? Part 2.
Jacopo Tintoretto (1518/19–1594), Study for a Mourning Figure, 1565. Uffizi. Florence (inv. no. 1837f)
Jacopo Tintoretto (1518/19–1594), Crucifixion, 1565. Sala dell’Albergo. Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice
To the lover of drawings, the term ‘blue paper’ might evoke an array of images. To the Italianist, perhaps the drawings of Tintoretto and Veronese; to the ‘dix-huitièmiste’, the Fables of Oudry; to the devotees of Dutch drawing, the figure studies of Govert Flinck and Jacob Adriaensz Backer; and to the Anglophile, the self-portraits of Jonathan Richardson the Elder.
The past few years have seen a revived interest in the appreciation and understanding of blue paper in all its forms. In 2024 alone, readers of this newsletter will have observed last month’s call for papers for a conference, ‘Drawn to Blue’, co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the University of Amsterdam, and prior to that, the opening of an exhibition, ‘Drawing on Blue’, at the Getty Center in January. January also saw the publication of Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers, the product of a conference held in May of 2021, which, amongst other topics, addressed blue paper in its Venetian context. In September of 2021, the first conference dedicated to the use of blue paper, ‘Venice in Blue The Use of carta azzurra in the Artist’s Studio and in the Printer’s Workshop, ca. 1500–50’, was held and will result in a forthcoming edited volume. This coming autumn, the Courtauld Gallery will host their own exhibition on the topic, ‘Drawn to Blue: Artists’ use of blue paper’.
Dr Alexa McCarthy, one of the contributors to Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers and co-editor of Venice in Blue The Use of carta azzurra in the Artist’s Studio and in the Printer’s Workshop, ca. 1500–50, joins our editor to unpick this phenomenon in a two-part feature.
Could you provide a brief synopsis of the colorito, disegno debate?
A debate that has pervaded the study of sixteenth-century Italian art positioned Florentine artists as the masters of disegno, both drawing and design, and Venetian artists as painters without concept of draughtsmanship. As Catherine Whistler has discussed, the opposition between disegno and colorito developed in the second half of the sixteenth century, outside of Venice. It was through readings of Giorgio Vasari’s (1511–1574) Le vite (1550; 1568) that this paragone, or debate, began to dominate artistic dialogues. Vasari did not necessarily envision disegno as informing the colorito of a painting, but rather conceived of disegno and colore as separate concepts. For Vasari, drawing was the foundation of artistic practice and the purpose of drawn lines in a composition was primarily to give form and relief to a figure. He considered line and tonal modeling to be integral components in rendering figures in space, whereas colour was a superficial element of a composition. His text established an opposition between disegno and colore for his contemporary and future readers.
Venetian writers on art including Marco Boschini (1613–1681), Lodovico Dolce (1508–1568), and Paolo Pino (fl. 1534–1565) used the term colorito or colorire in their respective writings, rather than colore, to describe Venetian colour. Colorito does not refer to the colours themselves, but to the active manner in which they are applied. Pino was the first to discuss the disparities between disegno and colore as manifested in Tuscan and Venetian art in his Dialogo di pittura (1548), published two years before the first edition of Vasari’s Le vite. In his text, comprised of a dialogue between a Florentine and a Venetian, Pino identified Michelangelo (1475–1564) as the Florentine master of disegno and Titian as the supreme Venetian colourist, championing the colorito of Venice. Vasari’s publication did not include a biography of Titian until the publication of the second edition in 1568.
Throughout his biography of Titian in the 1568 edition, Vasari praised Titian’s mastery of colorito but he repeatedly referred to his inability to draw. Vasari recalled that when he and Michelangelo visited Titian in the Belvedere and saw Titian’s depiction of Danaë, Michelangelo commented that Titian’s colouring and his manner were pleasing, but that it was a shame that Venetian artists did not place a focus on drawing in their studies. Throughout his text and through these anecdotal comments, Vasari further established a rhetoric that placed the Venetian application of colore [colorito] in opposition to Florentine disegno.
Evidenced by annotations in copies of Le vite in New Haven and Bologna, sixteenth-century readers were aware of Vasari’s Tuscan bias. Two readers from the Veneto, most likely Paduans, recorded the achievements of Venetian artists, including the missing Titian, in a two-volume set of the 1550 edition at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. After visiting Venice, Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) also annotated a copy of Vasari’s 1568 edition of Le vite now in the collection of the Library of the Archiginnasio, Bologna. Annibale made direct judgements in reference to Vasari’s newly added account of Titian’s life. By employing blue paper with a combination of black and white chalk, as Titian and the Carracci did, artists could explore the complementary relationship between disegno and colorito.
What are the stereotypes and myths that have come to surround blue paper?
The circulation of texts discussing the Venetian propensity for painted colorito together with the comparatively low survival rate of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Venetian drawings contributed to the lasting impression that these artists did not draw. The perceived opposition between disegno and colore in art historical scholarship was challenged in 1944 with the publication of Hans Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat’s The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries. The authors of this publication summarize the argument as follows, ‘conscious contrast of “Florentine design” and “Venetian coloring” – mainly developed in the circle of Florentine academicians who were so influential in all subsequent theories of art – produced the idea that Venetian artists did not draw at all.’ Since, scholars have demonstrated the extent to which Venetian artists were draughtsmen who infused their drawings with colore as they experimented with a multitude of materials. The art of historical narrative has evolved such that we now associate the material of blue paper with drawings produced in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice.
The synonymous association of blue paper and Venice is, itself, a bit of a misconception. As mentioned in last month’s Part 1, this association is largely due to the proliferation of the use of the material in the Veneto during the sixteenth century. A preference for blue paper as exhibited by late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venetian artists like Vittore Carpaccio and circumstances such as Albrecht Dürer’s (1471–1578) employment of the material coinciding with his documented trip to the city in 1505–1507 have led to a distinctly Venetian characterisation of blue paper. It is important to consider that blue paper was not only used in Venice, but in the Veneto more broadly, and was also employed throughout Italy by artists including Leonardo da Vinci, the Carracci, and the Zuccari. Luca Baroni has published on its use in the Marche, and we cannot forget that its earliest extant use for drawing is attributed to Bolognese artist, Giovanni da Modena (ca. 1379-1454/55).
What role does blue paper play in counteracting the Vasarian stereotype of a Venice without disegno?
Inherently blue paper served as an expeditious ‘in between’ colour onto which lighter and darker chalks could be applied. With black and white chalk on blue paper, artists could capture the complexities of their chosen subject through a range of tones, bringing drawings one step closer to a painting, and, in turn, closer to life. Therefore, drawings on blue paper subvert the idea that disegno is separate from colore or colorito.
Jacopo Tintoretto’s (1518/19–1594) Study for a Mourning Figure (1565) in the Uffizi (inv. no. 1837f) demonstrates the significance of blue paper in informing the colorito of polychromatic painted compositions. Tintoretto used black chalk and charcoal with white heightening to explore tonality in preparation for his monumental Crucifixion for the Sala dell’Albergo, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. In this drawing, the artist paid close attention to the shading along the figure’s left side, which is one of the darkest parts of the painting, at the centre of the canvas. The portions of the figure that are not visible in the painting are schematic and barely part of the blue paper drawing, suggesting that Tintoretto produced these studies after he had largely mapped out the composition.
The Study for a Mourning Figure is evocative of the non-linear trajectory of artistic practice and the iterative dialogue between drawing and painting. Drawing occurs throughout the artistic process, and not solely as a prelude to painting. In Tintoretto’s Study for a Mourning Figure, the preparatory drawing was not for the purpose of informing line, but rather, colour, and is indicative of blue paper’s critical role in this process. The majority of extant drawings by Tintoretto are figure and head studies and he used blue paper often. As the name Tintoretto (‘Little Dyer’) indicates, it is appropriate that the son of fabric dyer, Battista Robusti, would be interested in the material of blue paper.
Does disegno inform colorito?
A recurring theme in early modern texts on art is the importance of a mastery of conveying light and shade. How colour varies according to light is implicit in the meaning of the term colorito in art discourse. Drawings that display a gradation of tones inform the unione of a painted composition. For Paolo Pino, disegno was a model for the envisaged whole, as he understood that preliminary drawings are affected by the artist’s aim of a unified composition. This idea relates to Vasari’s statement in Le vite (1568) that preliminary drawings or sketches should look like ‘a stain,’ or imprint of what is to come. Vasari, who employed blue paper for his own drawings, also referred to drawing on paper with a ‘sweet tint’ (una tinta dolce), noting that tinted papers create a mezzo or middle tone.
In his late-fourteenth-century publication, Il libro dell’arte, Cennino Cennini wrote of the benefits of drawing on prepared paper, referring specifically to that which is coloured blue after production. Cennini provided a recipe for this blue wash, among other colours. It is important to recall that Cennini wrote Il libro prior to the widespread use of blue paper for artistic purposes. Cennini also used the terms chiaro and scuro in explaining how to provide a sense of three-dimensionality in painted compositions. He spoke of the ‘tre parti d’incarnazione,’ or three gradations of lightness. These three gradations of light and dark tones facilitate the tonal modeling of the figures, through which rilievo, or the ability to model three-dimensional forms in space on a flat surface, can be achieved. For Cennini, as well as the writers on art who would follow, drawing held a fundamental place in artistic practice. Cennini referred to drawing as the ‘basis and the gateway of painting.’
Humanist and pioneering art theoretician Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) discussed how the tonality of drawings can inform painted compositions in his De Pictura (1434). Alberti wrote of the importance of drawing and the ability to accurately render the effects of light and shade on all surfaces. Alberti asserted,
I would like that a [painted] composition be well drawn and excellently coloured. Therefore, in order that painters avoid blame and deserve praise, light and shadows, first of all, must be noted with great diligence […] you will certainly learn in an excellent way from Nature and from the objects themselves.
While advice on how best to achieve this mastery and through which media varies, there is an agreement in the utilization of three tones: light, dark, and ‘in between’ (mezzo). Blue paper provides this ‘in between’ surface for tonal modelling. A continuous drawing practice, together with an understanding of colour and the effects of light and shade, contribute to a naturalistic painted composition. The combination of blue paper with light and dark chalks would have been appealing to artists because it allowed for the expedient exploration of all three elements in one drawn composition. Further, the friable material of black chalk in concert with the inherent tonality of coloured paper mimics the pictorial capabilities of oil on textured canvas.
Real or Fake
Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has long formed a key part of an artist’s education and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.
I won’t take as hard a line on this as Sir Nicholas Penny, former director of the National Gallery, London, who once wrote in the Burlington Magazine that "no one in future can have any excuse for not instantly recognizing his hand". I will even proffer a clue in that two engravings and over 100 years separate these two pen and ink landscapes. In spite of the slightly poor quality of the lower image - mea culpa! – I’m sure that readers will now have no trouble in telling the real from the fake and not disappointing Sir Nicholas!
Scroll to the end of the newsletter for more information.
Resources and Recommendations
to listen
Slade Lectures 2018 (1): Drawing in Italy before 1500
In 2017-18 Professor David Ekserdjian was the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford and presented a series of lectures titled 'From Drawing to Painting in the Italian Renaissance'. The first of these lectures, titled ‘Drawing in Italy before 1500’ offers an expert’s insight into the early history of Renaissance drawing. The rest of the series is highly recommended listening.
to watch
Presentation of a drawing with a sentence written by Leonardo da Vinci discovered in Switzerland
Silvano Vinceti, Italian art historian, researcher and writer presents his findings on a drawing attributed to Cesare da Sesto, a favourite pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, which has been discovered in a Swiss collection at the Geneva press club.
to read
The Allure of Maarten van Heemskerck’s Roman Drawings by Dr. Christien Melzer
Dr Christien Melzer, Curator at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, discusses the ongoing exhibition which showcases two albums of Maarten van Heemskerck’s Roman drawings, comprising 86% of his known Roman works. These fascinating and rare drawings depict Rome’s ancient ruins, structures and new constructions before significant changes were made to the urban landscape. The exhibition, marking the 450th anniversary of Heemskerck's death, highlights the aesthetic quality of his drawings, which have historically been valued more for their documentary value.
answer
Jean Pesne after Guercino, Paesaggio con rovine, plate 6, British Museum, London
Ludovico Mattioli after Jean Pesne after Guercino, Paesaggio con rovine, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
The original, of course, is the lower image. The drawing is by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino. The upper image is by the notorious ‘Falsario del Guercino’.
Upper image: Falsario del Guercino, Paesaggio con rovine, Cento, Pinacoteca Civica
Lower image: Guercino, Paesaggio con rovine, Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection
Although the Falsario del Guercino remains anonymous, they have been identified as a late eighteenth-century Italian artist who systematically plagiarized the drawings of Guercino and created numerous landscapes in a Guercinesque manner. His prolific production of drawings, and his exaggeration of Guercino's suggestive use of line, attest to the contemporary collecting zeitgeist for Guercino's drawings, and to the lucrative nature of the falsario’s business. They created Guercinesque drawings using motifs taken from prints after genuine drawings and interspersed these with passages of their own invention.
As noted earlier, the fortune of these two drawings can be traced through two further engravings. These engravings belong to two series upon which the falsario was largely dependent for their compositions, as opposed to Guercino’s original drawings, which they likely never saw. Before Guercino’s original drawing arrived in London, and ultimately at Chatsworth, it formed part of a group of landscapes which were etched by Jean Pesne (1623-1700) in Paris in 1678. Pesne removed the figures and reversed the composition’s original orientation. In 1747 Ludovico Mattioli (1662-1747) created another set of prints after Pesne’s series, making further revisions to the composition and reversing the orientation again, returning it to the same sense as Guercino’s original. It is from this last print that the falsario worked to create their elaborated forgery. The drawing belongs to a group of similarly contrived drawings in the Pinacoteca Civica, Cento. Like a game of Broken Telephone, the falsario’s forgery, removed by two degrees, has grown further and further from the truth.
