December 2024
Sunday, December 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
Greetings from a chilly London.
For this month’s edition of the newsletter, we have picked out current events from across the UK and around the world, interviewed Rosie Razzall, Curator of Drawings at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and Juliet Carey, Senior Curator at Waddesdon Manor (The Rothschild Collection), has provided our ‘Drawing of the Month’ in memory of Alastair Laing. Nigel Ip reviews ‘Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504’ at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the customary selection of literary and audio highlights is followed, as ever, by the ‘Real or Fake’ section.
In some TC news, we are looking to bring an Operations Co-ordinator into the team. The role will be full-time and further details can be found on the Arts Council website.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
NEWS
In art world news, in London, Frank Auerbach, one of the great postwar figurative painters, died this month aged 93. Obituaries and tributes featured in The Art Newspaper and The Guardian, whilst a survey of Auerbach’s London landscapes is currently on view at Offer Waterman | Francis Outred until December 7. This sad news was followed by the absurd in New York: the sale of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian at Sotheby’s, New York, for $6.2 million. A ‘Marie Antoinette-like detachment from reality; ‘let them eat bananas’’. Read on for the Bendor Grosvenor’s lament, ‘The end of art?’. In London, the National Gallery has announced that the rarely displayed Carracci Cartoons, large preparatory drawings for the Farnese Palace in Rome, will go on display in April 2025. In television news, the first episode of BBC 2’s new three-part drama-documentary series, ‘Renaissance: The Blood And The Beauty’, starring Charles Dance as Michelangelo will be aired on December 2. For those in the USA, PBS has just released a two-part, four-hour documentary on Leonardo da Vinci written by Ken Burns. Will it be more Brown or Bambach? In the Netherlands, the Witt Library’s digitisation project is now half-way to completion. Photographs from the Netherlandish school have recently been published online and the Italian school will follow in February 2025. In Florence, at Pandolfini Casa d’Aste, a drawing attributed to an ‘artist of the 18th century’ sold for €290,000 to whispers that it may in fact be by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Altdorfer. In Rome, at the Villa Farnesina, an electrician has discovered 17th-century frescoes attributed Carlo Maratta and his school hidden behind a false ceiling.
In exhibition and fair news, it has been a busy few weeks with FAB Paris now concluded and PAN Amsterdam ending this evening. In London, London Art Week Winter Edition is underway and continues until December 6. In addition to the online displays, exhibitions are currently taking place at Stephen Ongpin Fine Art (until December 18), where Toby Campbell Fine Art is also in residence (until December 6). At 6 Mason’s Yard Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, Harry Moore-Gwyn and Freya Mitton are exhibiting ‘One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours from the 18th to 21st Centuries’ (until December 18). Abbott and Holder is hosting an exhibition of works by Mary Headlam (1874-1959) (until December 18), and Rosenberg & Co. is exhibiting ‘John Graham: A Mentor of Modernism’ (until December 3). Philip Mould & Company will be showing ‘Four Women: Four Centuries’ (December 2-13), and the Limner Company will be exhibiting at Wartski (December 2-6). Karen Taylor Fine Art has shared a newly discovered drawing by Evelyn de Morgan. In Paris, shows continue at Nicolas Schwed (until December 6), Galerie Christian Le Serbon (until December 6), Talabardon & Gautier (until December 20), and Galerie Coatalem (until December 20). In Madrid, Martínez Avezuela will be exhibiting ‘A Portrait of Mrs Doe’ (until 31 December).
Agostino Carracci, Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot, c. 1599, 202.5 × 398.8 cm, © The National Gallery, London, NG 147
In lecture and academic event news, in Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum is inviting applications for a three-day workshop supported by the Getty Paper Project: The Many Lives of Drawings – Reading and Interpreting Inscriptions and Marks on Dutch Drawings 1500-1800. Move fast, the application deadline is tomorrow, December 2. The workshop will run from May 21-23, 2025. In Oxford, at the Weston Library, on December 2, a panel of experts from the Bodleian Library, Ashmolean Museum, and Factum Foundation will discuss how 3-D recording technology has supported their research. ‘Seeing the Unseen in Oxford University Collections’ is free but booking is required. In association with the exhibition ‘Expérience Raphaël’ at the Palais Beaux-Arts de Lille, a study day titled ‘Raphael, un dessinateur et peintre de genie à la Renaissance’ will take place on February 5. Talks will be given by luminaries in the field like Angelamaria Aceto, Carmen Bambach and Paul Joannides. Event reservation opens on December 5. Online, on December 7, Dr Claire Van Cleave will be in conversation on Paola’s Studiolo discussing the Farnese collection of drawings. Event registration and further details are available here. In New York, at the Morgan Library and Museum, Stephanie Buck, Director of the Kupferstich-Kabinett at the Dresden State Art Collections, and the Drawing Institute’s 2024 Thaw Senior Fellow, will deliver the 2024 Thaw Lecture, ‘Through lines: Approaching Early German Drawings’. The lecture will take place on December 10, 4-5 PM. The Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, is accepting applications for a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship for the 2025-2026 academic year. Applications are due by December 16. In Paris, the Forum Bella Maniera will take place at the Institut National d’Historie de l’Art on December 14 at 14.30. Entry is free and no sign-up is required. A call for papers has been issued for the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 2027. The publication will focus on Netherlandish works on paper. Applicants should send a 500-word proposal and a short CV to volume editors by January 20, 2025. In New York, the Morgan Library & Museum has uploaded to their Youtube channel two recordings from the symposium held in conjunction with Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection.
In acquisition news, the Fondation Custodia, Paris, has acquired a drawing by Matthieu Ignace van Bree from Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge which was exhibited at our summer exhibition, 500 Years of Drawing. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, have both acquired drawings by Willem Arondéus from Onno van Seggelen. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has acquired a drawing by Hans Bol from Galerie de Bayser, and a drawing by William James Müller from Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, has acquired a drawing by Hendrick Avercamp from Onno van Seggelen. The Chateau de Fontainebleau, Fontainebleau, has pre-empted a watercolour by Jean-Baptiste Isabey from the auctioneers Audap & Associés. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, has acquired a drawing by Jan de Bisschop from Onno van Seggelen. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, has acquired a drawing by Jean-Léon Gérôme from Colnaghi Elliot. The Teylers Museum, Haarlem, has acquired a self-portrait by Wybrand Hendriks from Onno van Seggelen.
EVENTS
Edgar Degas, Racehorses, c. 1895‑99, pastel on tracing paper, mounted on cardboard, 55.8 × 64.8 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 1950. Photo: NGC. On display at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, from December 13.
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
Demystifying drawings
The Italian Drawings of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
with Rosie Razall
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam houses one of the world’s finest collections of Italian Renaissance drawings. Between 2018 and 2023 these drawings were systematically researched and catalogued with the support of the Getty Paper Project, culminating in a flurry of activity in 2024.
In May 2024, the 15th- and 16th-century Italian drawings were published in a free, open-access online collection catalogue. In October 2024, a loan exhibition of 120 drawings from the collection, titled Naissance et Renaissance du Dessin Italien, opened to acclaim at the Fondation Custodia in Paris. The exhibition is accompanied by a physical catalogue, Italian Renaissance Drawings from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and continues until January 12, 2025. To top it all off, in late November 2024, another exhibition, Secrets of Italian Drawings, opened at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, continuing until March 23, 2025. Because, clearly, one exhibition wasn’t enough!
Rosie Razall, Curator of Drawings at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, joins the editor to discuss the outcomes of the research project, the historic links between Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and the Fondation Custodia, and the drawing she’d most like to take home with her.
Workshop of Benozzo Gozzoli (c. 1420-1497), Studies after plaster casts of feet, page from the Gozzoli Album, c. 1450-60. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs Collection), inv. no. I 562 5 verso
Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517), Studies of a Young Man Leaning on a Pedestal, and Five Heads, c. 1515. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs Collection), inv. no. I 563 M 3
Drawings dating to the first half of the 15th century are vanishingly rare, and this area is one of the strongest features of the collection at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. How do these drawings come to be in the collection?
The core of the Boijmans drawings collection came about thanks to the efforts of the German-born banker and collector Franz Koenigs. He moved to Haarlem for business in the early 1920s and spent the next decade assembling a collection of astonishing quality. It included almost 400 drawings by Fra Bartolommeo from the collection of Niccolò Gabburri, then still housed in two of his albums. Other strengths are the early Venetian drawings; the only drawing attributed to Giorgione; and a wealth of drawings from the Tintoretto workshop. At the time that Koenigs was building his collection, Italian art of the fifteenth century and earlier was receiving renewed attention from scholars such as Bernard Berenson and Roberto Longhi. Ger Luijten once described Koenigs’ interest, shared also by fellow collector Frits Lugt, as part of a prevailing taste for ‘the earlier the better’. He bought, for example, 13 drawings by Pisanello, sheets by Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, a drawing attributed to Donatello, and an album of studies from the workshop of Benozzo Gozzoli. An enthusiasm for ‘rediscovering’ drawings from the 14th and 15th centuries nevertheless led to some overoptimistic attributions. For example, Koenigs had a drawing that he, and Charles Loeser before him, believed was the only surviving sheet by Piero della Francesca. That drawing didn’t make it into the Paris exhibition, but other early sheets acquired by Koenigs were given attributions for the first time during the cataloguing project. A previously anonymous drawing now attributed to Niccolò di Pietro Gerini is the first work you see in the exhibition.
The project to catalogue the Italian drawings brought together an impressive roster of experts, and the list of contributors to the online collection catalogue reads like a ‘supergroup’ of today’s leading drawings scholars. What surprises and discoveries emerged from these collaborative research efforts?
The catalogue was a true collaborative effort, not only from those who wrote text entries for the online or exhibition catalogues, but also those who attended our ‘expert meetings’ to offer their opinions, or who responded with thoughts or advice over email. I’m convinced that this is the way to conduct such a catalogue, so that as many ideas and research leads come to the table as possible before publication. Sometimes we found there were two completely contrasting ideas about an attribution, but mostly when it concerned a difficult drawing it was reassuring to find that everyone else was as stumped as we were.
We made a number of exciting discoveries during the cataloguing process, several of which are included in the exhibition. As well as the Gerini attribution, we have a newly reattributed study of an angel for an Annunciation by Pontormo, a drawing by Parri Spinelli that has escaped scholarship so far, a muscular nude attributed to Pellegrino Tibaldi, a new sheet by Lazzaro Bastiani, and a mysterious study of a pilgrim, which we still haven’t been able to attribute but wanted to include so that people can see it and decide for themselves. Other drawings are not reattributed but are published for the first time, such as a drawing by Giulio Romano, or have not been published in many years.
Two exhibitions, comprised exclusively of drawings from the collection, are being held simultaneously: one in Paris and the other in Rotterdam. How will the new findings be presented across the two exhibitions, and in what ways do the exhibitions differ?
Each exhibition has been conceived for its location and audience. The idea for an exhibition of the most important Italian drawings from the Boijmans collection as a fitting conclusion to the Getty Paper Project-funded catalogue, was initiated by my predecessor and co-author, Albert Elen, together with Ger Luijten. Curator Maud Guichané and I were able to continue with the plans under Hans Buijs and Stijn Alsteens. We made a selection of 120 highlights and planned an exhibition catalogue that would make use of the texts that had already been written for online. The motive for this was very simple: to showcase the strengths of the Rotterdam collection, which apart from the Fra Bartolommeo drawings and some other well-known sheets, is still full of surprises for drawings enthusiasts. In Paris we kept things approximately chronological, with drawings grouped together according to their regional geography. We felt this was the best way to gain an overview of a collection that is still to a certain extent unknown.
Marco Basaiti (c. 1470-1530), Rocky Landscape with Hills and a City on a Lake, c. 1505-10. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), inv. no. I 481 (PK)
I always thought it was a shame that because of our museum closure the exhibition wouldn’t be seen in Rotterdam (after Paris, a smaller selection of 70 works heads to the Morgan Library & Museum in New York in 2026). Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, our publicly accessible storage building which opened next to the museum in 2021, was the perfect place to take a different approach. In the exhibition there, we take the visitor behind the scenes of what we have been up to over the last 6 years of the cataloguing project. Drawings are seen through the eyes of a researcher: how blue paper suggests an artist from Venice, whereas metalpoint on prepared paper is more likely to mean an artist from Florence; how to identify left- or right-handed hatching; how to interpret collector’s stamps, or different types of damage on the sheet; even how to identify a forgery. My colleagues Esmé van der Krieke, Fleurance van Wakeren and I had a lot of fun putting this together. We made sure to include great drawings by great artists – Fra Bartolommeo of course, and Tintoretto, Veronese, Pisanello – but we were also able to show drawings that are unlikely ever to be requested on loan, but are great examples of the points we were making about how to look at a drawing.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has been closed for renovation since May 2019. What makes the Fondation Custodia the most logical institution to partner with?
Fondation Custodia has a very special place in the drawings world: as a touchstone of intellectual rigour for the scholarly community as well as a place where the subtleties of the drawing medium are celebrated. This is seen in their beautifully crafted exhibition programme and all the elegant apparatus that goes along with it, from their vernissage invitations to their postcards. It was an honour to be able to show our drawings at an institution which already shares close links with the Boijmans. In 2014, the Fondation hosted a selection of highlights from the Boijmans’ Netherlandish drawings, Bosch to Bloemaert. The Italian drawings exhibition might loosely be considered a sequel to that show. Another important reason for us to collaborate again is that Lugt and Koenigs were friends and direct contemporaries, and were building their collections at the same time. There are many parallels (and diversions) in their respective drawings collections.
If you had to choose one drawing from the exhibitions to take home with you, what would it be and why?
For a drawing that engages my attention again and again, it has to be the pen and ink landscape by Marco Basaiti, which has a view of a city in the centre of the sheet and mountains behind. The foreground is occupied by a rocky landscape, which is reduced to rough outlines and hatching. It almost looks like two separate landscapes, until you notice the bridge connecting the rocks and trees with the isolated city. It’s a drawing where the mark-making and the subject are constantly jostling with each other for attention, in the most satisfying way. But there’s way too much light in my Rotterdam flat, much better for plants than Venetian landscape drawings!
What dates should readers mark for their diaries, and when will Museum Boijmans van Beuningen reopen to the public?
A few weeks ago we had the good news that the funding for the museum renovation has been secured from Rotterdam city council and other sources. This means we can move forward with the next phase of the renovation, and the museum is scheduled to reopen in 2030. In the intervening time - which always passes more quickly than you think! - my goal is to ensure that the entire drawings collection (19,000 objects) is online in time for the reopening. I am always in need of funding support for this endeavour. As well as working on the ongoing exhibition programme in the Depot, I want to buy some new drawings worthy of joining the existing collection. Rotterdam has been waiting a long time for its beloved museum to reopen so I want to make sure it does so with a fresh look on the drawings collection.
DRAWING OF THE MONTH
Juliet Carey, Senior Curator at Waddesdon Manor (National Trust / Rothschild Foundation), has kindly chosen our fifteenth drawing of the month.
François Boucher (Paris 1703 – 1770 Paris)
The Fountain of Love, c. 1736-1737
Black chalk on paper; framing lines in black in, 364 x 277 mm, Waddesdon (Rothschild Family), on loan since 2003.
Accession number 222.2003m
The turret at Waddesdon Manor in which our drawings are stored can feel gloomy in the winter, which is when I first encountered this work. Twenty years ago, still new to my job, I was looking through all our Solander boxes of drawings, getting increasingly cold and wishing I could look at them wearing woollen, fingerless gloves. I can still remember the pleasure of finding this mood-changing sheet: the velvety warmth of the chalk, the grace of the figures and the sense of life and growth in the vegetation.
The inscription - FONTAINE / DE LAMOUR - gives the drawing its title and there is water falling through the round opening of the fountain. However, the presence of water is most strongly suggested, implicitly, by the brightness on the face of the youth looking into the basin of the fountain, as the light reflected on the (unseen) surface of the water bounces back up. The youth is presumably seeking some prediction of the future, or fulfilment of his wishes. In the foreground, another young man is a little closer to achieving his desires, declaring his love to a shepherdess, who protests, but only gently. Above them, a pair of stone putti kiss, providing an ironic, infantile gloss on the hopes of the adults below. It usually takes a bit of time for people to notice the figure peering out from the bushes on the left, watching.
François Boucher’s revival of the pastoral genre was one if his most original and influential achievements. His images of shepherds and shepherdesses in moments of amorous leisure (here, the sheep look after themselves while their minders are distracted) reached an enormous market and were translated into tapestry, porcelain, printed and textiles and engravings. A brilliant draughtsman, Boucher had honed his skills early, making copies after drawings by Antoine Watteau, and continued to explore the possibilities of drawing throughout his life, making thousands of working studies as well as highly finished presentation sheets for collectors.
The Fountain of Love demonstrates Boucher’s mastery of black chalk, which is a mineral mined from the earth. Chalk is soft but compact and can be sawed into sticks or broken into pieces. The best chalk produces marks without the artist having to press too hard so that it is powdery but does not crumble. It adheres easily to the paper, whose texture further enriches its effects. Although chalk can be manipulated without any tools, Boucher almost certainly used a porte-crayon (crayon holder) to make this drawing, to keep his hands clean and the marks precise. Boucher pressed harder, with the pointed end of a piece of chalk, to create distinct outlines, particularly in the foreground, in contrast with the lighter gestures that conjure the trees furthest away from the viewer.
Many of Boucher’s works were disseminated through prints and this drawing was engraved by Pierre Aveline (1702?-1760) and published by Huquier in 1738. It was announced in the Mercure de France alongside others after Boucher, including a companion print, La Bonne Aventure, which shares not only the Italianate setting with an overgrown fountain, but also the theme of fortune-telling. One can see in the Waddesdon drawing that Boucher intended it to be interpreted by a printmaker. He delineated everything clearly, without rubbing, so that the engraver could copy each mark with the burin. However, Boucher’s skill with the chalk, allowed him to achieve the earthy softness and unity of surface more often associated with smudging and stumping this most yielding of graphic media. Almost the entire surface of the paper is covered with a network of lines, suggesting the exuberance and multi -directional growth of the vegetation: vertical strokes for the cypresses; short flicks and zigzags for the shrubs arching over the foreground group; long isolated curves for the tendrils in the top right. I particularly love the way Boucher left small patches of bare paper to make the light sparkle through the trees and over the faces, clothes and bodies of the people.
In memory of Alastair Laing (1944-2024), who taught us all so much about Boucher and about drawing. His contribution to the collection and to the curatorial life of Waddesdon Manor is beyond measure.
REVIEW
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 (Nov. 9, 2024 - Feb. 16, 2025)
The Royal Academy of Arts, London
Reviewed by Nigel Ip (Print Quarterly)
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John (The 'Taddei Tondo'), Royal Academy of Arts, London. Bequeathed by Sir George Beaumont, 1830. Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London, Photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited. Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with Royal Collection Trust and the National Gallery, London
At the age of 21, a young Raphael left Perugia for the city of Florence, arriving sometime around October 1504. Michelangelo's David had only just been installed in front of the Palazzo della Signoria (present-day Palazzo Vecchio), while the Mona Lisa remained a work in progress in Leonardo da Vinci's workshop. Yet something compelled Raphael to stay for the next four years before ultimately residing in Rome.
Featuring 45 objects across three rooms, the Royal Academy of Arts’ exhibition recounts the artistic events that serendipitously brought all three artists into contact with each other for a period of about two years. The first room places Michelangelo’s unfinished Taddei Tondo - owned by the Royal Academy - in the context of Raphael’s experiments with Madonna and Child compositions. The second is a solo display highlighting Leonardo’s so-called Burlington House Cartoon, the first time it has returned home since 1962, when it was put up for sale and acquired by the National Gallery. Meanwhile, the third room examines the two monumental fresco commissions intended to decorate the newly-built Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria, assembling a wealth of drawings related to Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina, neither of which ever saw painted completion.
Raphael’s memory of the Taddei Tondo was surprisingly long-lasting. He would have seen it in the house of his Florentine patron Taddeo Taddei and a double-sided sheet from Chatsworth features his outline drawing of the tondo on its recto. He was especially taken by the Christ Child’s twisting posture, adapting it for his painting of the Bridgewater Madonna (National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh). One related sheet of exploratory compositional studies shows the influence of Leonardo’s sketches, in which he devises various forms of interaction between the Madonna and Child, some of which emerge as completed paintings well into his late career. In contrast to the Michelangelo drawings on display, which consist of three very early copies after Giotto and two others connected to the Taddei Tondo, drawn with precise, layered cross-hatching, Raphael’s Madonna and Child studies reveal his more carefree approach to pen and ink.
Returning to Leonardo, the Burlington House Cartoon is a large-scale example of his Marian subjects at play. There is no evidence of having been pricked or incised for transfer, leading some to believe it may have functioned as a presentation drawing instead of a working cartoon. Following this line of inquiry, the curators have boldly proposed that the Burlington House Cartoon could be the very same cartoon described by Giorgio Vasari as having been exhibited in Santissima Annunziata, where ‘men and women, young and old, continued for two days to flock for a sight of it… in order to gaze at the marvels of Leonardo’, traditionally believed to have occurred in 1501 with a similar cartoon that featured the infant St John playing with a lamb. This significant event demonstrated how the public attitude towards drawings as potentially self-sufficient works of art, not just expendable preparatory media, was starting to change, thus contributing to a rise in collectors of artists’ drawings.
The general theory being proposed is that Vasari’s reliance on second-hand sources may have confused two of Filippino Lippi’s commissions, one of which is traditionally believed (without documentary proof) to have been reassigned to Leonardo. As a result, they believe the cartoon was made around 1506-08 as a proposal for an altarpiece intended for the Sala del Gran Consiglio, which was eventually reassigned to Fra Bartolomeo in November 1510. Unfortunately, no surviving documents suggest Leonardo was ever hired by the Signoria to work on such an altarpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne and the Infant St John the Baptist (‘The Burlington House Cartoon’), The National Gallery, London. Purchased with a special grant and contributions from the Art Fund, The Pilgrim Trust, and through a public appeal organised by the Art Fund, 1962. Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with Royal Collection Trust and the National Gallery, London
Leonardo’s employment to paint the Battle of Anghiari is well established, however, having been commissioned by the Signoria on 3 October 1503. Michelangelo was approached a year later to work on the Battle of Cascina. Popular discourse tends to sensationalise this art-historical episode as a ‘competition’ between the two artists, which is incredibly misleading. Rather than fighting for the same wall space, their respective commissions were planned for different parts of the wall, probably side-by-side.
This ‘competition’ reveals their diverging visions of art, rather than their supposed personal slights. As the exhibited drawings reveal, Leonardo devoted his attention to studying expressive emotion in living creatures and their physiognomy, while Michelangelo championed the beauty of the male nude. For Leonardo most of the drawings are studies of horses in movement using everything from chalks and charcoal to pen and ink. For Michelangelo, his highly developed nude studies show an interest in the internal workings of the human body.
Although the frescoes never fully manifested in paint, their monumental cartoons had an almost immediate impact on the artists who came to see them and inspired an array of copies and derivatives. To give visitors some idea of their scale, the curators have reproduced at full size the outlines of the Bathers scene at one end of the room. We are also treated to a reunion of two famous copies of Leonardo and Michelangelo’s compositions from Holkham Hall and the Louvre, allowing us to speculate on their visual impact and probable placement as a pair.
Raphael certainly saw both cartoons in situ. In a sheet of metalpoint studies (Ashmolean, Oxford), he copied the Fight for the Standard in one corner and the heads of two of the horses in another. What is most revealing, however, is an additional sketch of the back end of a horse, which can be traced to Leonardo’s black-chalk drawing of a cavalcade in the exhibition. This proves that Raphael had direct access to Leonardo’s drawings. He also did a free interpretation of the Bathers theme.
This is a stupendous exhibition for Renaissance aficionados and drawings enthusiasts. The visitor experience is surprisingly light, given how much context surrounds the changing artistic tastes of the Florentine public, the new claims about the Burlington House Cartoon, and the political events that birthed the two fresco commissions. In fact, the visual links being made within carefully curated groups of works render those facts and figures almost subsidiary to the learning experience of the viewer. There can be no doubt that this is one of most accessible and informative exhibitions on Renaissance art in recent years.
Bastiano da Sangallo, after Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Battle of Cascina (‘The Bathers’), c. 1542. Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Collection of the Earl of Leicester. By kind permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of Holkham Estate. Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with Royal Collection Trust and the National Gallery, London
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.
Drawing inspiration from a recent article in The Art Newspaper on the topic of Old Master forgeries and their uses—an excellent read penned by last month’s exhibition reviewer, J. Cabelle Ahn—this month’s ‘Real or Fake’ delves into a fascinating tale of (mis)fortune and unreliable narrators.
In 1960, one of these two drawings was exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as a work by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Two years later, the drawing was included in a four-volume compendium titled Great Drawings of All Time, and in 1971, it entered the Met’s permanent collection.
The appearance of a second, almost identical drawing on the London art market in 1962 raised suspicions. In 1956, Alexandre Ananoff, the astronaut-turned-art historian, advanced the claim that Fragonard created line-for-line copies of his own drawings, offering an explanation for the existence of duplicate works. Could this be one such example, or is something more nefarious at play?
Scroll to the end to reveal the answer.
Resources and Recommendations
to listen
For those that need more persuading around London’s two ongoing exhibitions spotlighting Renaissance drawings, listen on. Ben Luke talks to Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, about the show for the Art Newspaper. Luke also talks to Julien Domercq, a curator at the Royal Academy, about the year 1504, and the remarkable crucible of creativity when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were all in Florence.
to watch
An interview with Frank Auerbach | The Charcoal Heads
In an increasingly poignant film released earlier this year to celebrate ‘Frank Auerbach. The Charcoal Heads’, at the Courtauld Gallery the artist reflected on his life and artistic practice. During his early years as a young artist in post-war London, Auerbach produced one of his most remarkable bodies of work: a series of large-scale portrait heads made in charcoal. Auerbach spent months on each drawing, working and reworking them during numerous sessions with his sitters.
to read
Unlocking the English Portrait Miniature
This month’s recommendation is less of a read and more of a tool. This new platform dedicated to the close examination of portrait miniatures in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is the first of its kind. As the website states: ‘the resource offers the opportunity to study a large number of miniature portraits of men and women of a previous age in greater detail than has ever before been possible. Unlock for yourself centuries old secrets surrounding the sitters, the artists, the materials used and more.’
answer
The original, of course, is the upper image.
Upper image: Jean Honoré Fragonard, The Sultan, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.: 2008.437
Lower image: After Jean Honoré Fragonard, The Sultan, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972.118.213
In spite of the lower drawing’s publication by the aforementioned Ananoff in 1961 as an authentic Fragonard, it was later revealed to be a forgery. The drawing which appeared on the art market in 1962 turned out to be genuine. The scandal of the fake Fragonards was publicly exposed in 1978 by Geraldine Norman in The Times. Norman claimed that over thirty wash drawings attributed to Fragonard were fakes, many of which had recently been published by Ananoff with vague, unverifiable, or falsified provenances. Ananoff protested his innocence, as seen in this piece of footage, but he was ultimately deemed an 'unreliable narrator.' In his honour—or to his shame—the forged drawings have come to be known in certain circles as ‘Fragonoffs’.
In 1987, the Met’s The Sultan was identified as a ‘Fragonoff’ and later discussed in detail by Perrin Stein and Marjorie Shelley in 2009 in the Metropolitan Museum Journal, following the arrival of the original drawing as part of the Catherine Curran Bequest. With both drawings now side by side in the Met’s collection, Stein wrote, “it is ultimately this carefulness that exposes the forger’s hand.” She noted that the spontaneity of Fragonard’s use of brown wash, which is missing in the forgery, is a hallmark of the artist’s style. Upon close examination, Fragonard’s disregard for his own underdrawing becomes evident, as he frequently ignored the initial indications in black chalk. By contrast, the forger is shown to have slavishly adhered to their own underdrawing.
For further reading, see Stein and Shelley’s respective articles.
