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ITALIAN

MASTER DRAWINGS From The

British

Royal Collection

ITALIAN MASTER DRAWINGS From The British Royal Collection

Giovanni Bellini

(cat. 6)

ITALIAN

MASTER DRAWINGS Leonardo

to Canaletto

From The

British Royal Collection

JANE ROBERTS Curator of the Print

The Royal

Library,

Room

Windsor Castle

COLLINS HARVILL 8 Grafton Street, London

Wl

1987 National Gallery of Art, Washington The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Art Institute of Chicago •

Front cover illustration: Figure

Back cover

(cat. 14)

The corner of the Ducal Palace by Canaletto (cat. 58)

illustration:

looking towards

Masquerade Costume

in

by Leonardo da Vinci

Giorgio Maggiore

S.

EXHIBITION CALENDAR

National Gallery of Art, Washington:

10May-26July 1987

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: 8 August-25 October 1987 The Art Institute of Chicago: 10 November 1987-26 January 1988 This exhibition

is

supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities

Portions of this catalogue were the catalogue of the exhibition at

first

published in Master Drawings

The Queen's

Gallery,

in the

William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd London Glasgow Sydney Auckland •

•

•

Toronto Johannesburg •

!)

First published by Collins Harvill 1987 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 1986, 1987

All rights reserved

ISBN

00 272338 7

Illustrations originated

Gilchrist Bros Ltd,

Royal Collection,

Buckingham Palace from

by

Leeds

Photoset in Linotron Meridien by

Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd, Glasgow

April 1986

1

CONTENTS

Foreword

7

Preface

9

Acknowledgements

10

Introduction

1

List of

Works Referred to in

Abbreviated Form

CATALOGUE

20

21

An Appendix concerning Watermarks

143

Index of Artists

149

FOREWORD

The

Royal Collection includes superlative works of areas, but is perhaps most widely known for its old master drawings. The thirty thousand old master and modern drawings, housed in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, have been gathered by many monarchs over more than three centuries. The collection is especially famous for its Italian drawings. These include an unrivalled group of six hundred Leonardos and concenBritish

art in

numerous

work of other great draughtsmen as well as chosen according to the changing tastes and interests of the Royal Family. Over the years, skilful and vigilant advisers to the Crown have assisted with the acquisitions of individual drawings and entire collections. We have long dreamt of showing a survey exhibition drawn from the extraordinary treasures across the centuries in the Windsor collection, one which would reveal the beautiful works by many different artists to be found trations of the single sheets

between Andrew Robison, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art, and Jane Roberts, Curator of the Print Room a't Windsor Castle, began years ago, and were joined and enthusiastically supported by Oliver Everett, the Librarian at Windsor. Mrs Roberts's 1986-1987 exhibition of Master Drawings in the Royal Collection, at the Queen's Gallery in London, there. Talks

CARTER BROWN

provided the final occasion to bring our plans forward. Agreeing that the Italian old master drawings were the strongest and most comprehensive component of the Royal Collection, Dr Robison and Mrs Roberts chose sixty-

one works

to

show

a selection

finest sheets at

This exhibition, opening with intense and studies

of

moving

the Florentine and Venetian Renaissance,

ranging through great examples of Mannerism and the Baroque, concludes with representatives from Windsor's

marvellous groups of Piazzetta and Canaletto. While not a pedantic survey, it nonetheless includes most of the great masters of Italian draughtsmanship, who are

shown in works of power and

superlative quality.

For her gracious generosity in lending such an extraordinary selection of works we are most of all indebted to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. We deeply appreciate the collegial friendship and help from Mrs Roberts and Mr Everett, as well as Julia Baxter, Exhibitions Officer,

who

have been wonderful in supporting the exhibition and

in

arranging the details of the loan. Mrs Roberts has also kindly revised her Master Drawings catalogue to accommodate the drawings

shown

for the first time in America.

IAN McKIBBIN WHITE

JAMES

Director

Director

Director

National Gallery of Art

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The Art

J.

from the

Windsor.

N.

WOOD

Institute of Chicago

PREFACE

and the exhibition which it accompanies, has developed out of the selection of Master Drawings in the

by two other Leonardo drawings (Nos. 14 and

Royal Collection

which was shown at The Queen's Gallery, from April 1986. Just under a hundred and fifty items were included in that exhibition, which covered for the first time the full chronological range of drawings (together with some miniatures and

this artist.

Buckingham

Raphael's studies of the Massacre of the Innocents and of Poetry) had been promised to the Pierpont Morgan Library

This catalogue,

illuminated

Palace,

manuscripts)

represented

in

the

Royal

Collection.

For the purpose of a travelling exhibition it was decided number of drawings, to omit works which presented a potential conservation hazard (such as the magnificent composite sheet illuminated by Clovio), and to confine the selection to works by Italian artists of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The present catalogue thus contains many of the greatest drawings of the School for which the Royal Collection is most renowned. It does not, however, include works by artists such as Holbein, Poussin and Claude for whom the Royal holdings are equally important. But by concentrating on the Italian drawings, a rather more uniform historical thread can be traced through the sequence of works. When an exhibition of Italian Drawings was first discussed, Her Majesty had already agreed that the Royal Library's Leonardo: Nature Studies exhibition should be shown in Madrid and Barcelona in 1987-8. As that exhibition includes some of Leonardo's plant and landscape studies that had also been included in The Queen's Gallery selection, their place has been taken in the present exhibition to limit the

16)

from

the Royal Library's extraordinary holdings of the works by

Another small group

of drawings (including

drawings by Raphael and his School planned to open in the Autumn of 1 987. Replacements for these omissions have therefore been found and a few supplementary drawings have been added, so that the present selection includes ten drawings not previously shown at The Queen's Gallery (Nos. 8, 14, 16, 18, 22, 29, 32,47, 50 and 60). The Royal Library at Windsor Castle is very glad to be co-operating again for the present exhibition with the National Gallery of Art, Washington and with the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco. Previous exhibitions of drawings from Windsor at both these galleries have proved most successful. We are also very glad that an exhibition of drawings from the Royal Collection will be seen in Chicago for the first time and we are delighted to be involved with the Art Institute of Chicago for this for their exhibition of

purpose.

and credit for the genesis and developdue to Jane Roberts, the Print Room, Windsor Castle, and to

Particular thanks

ment

of the present exhibition are

Curator of

Andrew Robison, Curator lery of Art,

of Drawings, the National Gal-

Washington.

OLIVER EVERETT The Librarian, Windsor

Castle

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The foundation laid in

to

any study

of the

Windsor drawings was

the great series of catalogues of the collection

published by the Phaidon Press over the All the titles relating to the Italian

last half

drawings in

century.

this series

are included in the List of Works Referred to in Abbreviated debt to the scholarship of the General Form on page 20.

My

Editor

and authors

of these catalogues

must be abun-

dantly clear.

supplied by the following: Bologna, A. Villani e

Figli,

Laboratori Fotografica (35,45 and 46: reproduced by kind

permission of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici per le Provincie di Bologna, Ferrara, Forli e Ravenna); Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland (51: repro-

Duke

of Sutherland);

5); Forli,

Giorgio Liverani

duced by kind permission

of the

Florence, Archivi Alinari

and

(

1

reproduced by kind permission of the Istituti Cultured Artistici della Citta di Forli); London, British Museum (25, 26 and 27: reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees); London, Courtauld Institute of Art (17: Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth, reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement); Milan, Soprintendenza, Laboratorio Fotoradiografico (12); New York, David Tunick Inc. (53); New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (10); Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada (57); Paris, Reunion des Musees Nationaux (11 and 19); (41:

Work on the watermarks

section of the Master Drawings

member of the Room staff, Olivia Winterton (nee Hughes-Onslow), who assisted me with great patience and forbearance at all catalogue was undertaken by a former Print

She also undertook a detailed study of the so-called Lanier star marks, and my discussion of these on page 1 5 is largely dependent on her work. My other colleagues at Windsor, and in the Lord Chamberlain's Office in London, have provided continuous support during the preparatory work on both stages in the planning of that exhibition.

ali

Rome,

Biblioteca Hertziana (17);

Rome,

Istituto Centrale

Without them the present catalogue could not have been written. Other colleagues and friends who have assisted in various ways include the following: Noel Annesley, Charles Avery, Giulia Bartrum, Diane De Grazia, Olive Fortey, Christopher Gatiss, John Gere, Rupert Hodge, George Knox, Francois Mace de Lepinay, Constance

per

Messenger, Francis Russell, Nicholas Savage, Nicholas Turner and Linda Wolk. As usual we are indebted to the staff of A. C. Cooper, and to our own photographic staff at Windsor, for providing the photographic material on

Vienna, Graphische

which the

Finally, I must once again thank my family for their continuing patience and constant support during what developed into weeks of last-minute work.

exhibitions.

illustrations in the present catalogue are based.

All items in the

Royal Collection and documents in the Royal Archives are reproduced by Gracious Permission of Her Majesty Elizabeth II. Comparative illustrations for the relevant catalogue entries, together

with permission to reproduce, have been

Catalogo e la Documentazione (31); Rome, Museo Nazionale di Castel S. Angelo (30); Rome, Monumenti, Musei e Gallerie Pontificie (18, 24 and 39); Rome, Reverenda Fabbrica di S. Pietro in Vaticano (40); Vancouver, il

University of British Columbia, Professor George (52

and

53); Venice, Gallerie dell'

28: reproduced

53);

by permission

Sammlung

Accademia

location

is

and

of the Soprintendente);

Albertina (31, 52 and

Washington, National Gallery of Art

Where no

Knox

(6

cited, the illustration

(9 is

and

10).

taken from

the Royal Collection.

JANE ROBERTS Windsor

INTRODUCTION

This catalogue includes a selection of 61 of the principal

drawings in the Royal Collection. At the outset it must be said that this selection, like the Collection itself, contains no well-balanced chronological series representing all the highways (and some of the byways) of the history of Italian art. For unlike the great national museums and art galleries, where curators have a public duty to acquire a broad range of all that was and is the best, the British monarchs, by whom and for whom the Royal Collection was formed, have acquired what it pleased Italian

them (and their advisers and donors) and no less. However, the interest in

no more demonstrated by the Royal collectors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries means that the history and development of Italian draughtsmanship can be fully illustrated from the Windsor Print Room, using the unparalleled holdings of drawings by Leonardo and other early masters, by the great artists of the seventeenth century, and by to acquire, Italian art

the masters of the eighteenth-century Venetian school.

A

comprehensive picture can thus, I believe, be given, in spite of the absence of significant works by artists such as Titian, Veronese, Guardi and Tiepolo. Before any drawing in the Royal Collection is included in an exhibition, it is remounted and (where possible and necessary) lifted from its old backing paper, cleaned and restored. For the present exhibitions, these operations have been carried out by Michael Warnes and his drawings conservation department at Windsor. The conservation work has sometimes resulted in unexpected discoveries. Thus additional drawings and inscriptions have been revealed on the versos of Nos. 30, 36 and 44, all of which are naturally of relevance in any discussion of the

The

main

(recto) drawings.

process has also greatly facilitated a study of the watermarks. Tracings of these marks, with brief comlifting

mentary, are included as an Appendix to this catalogue. The value of watermark examination for the art historian was demonstrated during the selection process for the Master Drawings exhibition. Our first list had included the study of a dromedary attributed to Pisanello (P&W 26). In his Introduction to the catalogue of the earlier Italian

drawings

at Windsor, the eminent scholar A. E. Popham had written: "Chronologically the series begins rather

whimsically with the drawing of a camel by Pisanello, which must date from before 1450" (P&W, p. 9). However, the watermark found on this sheet (a three-runged ladder within a shield, topped by a six-pointed star)

type found

on paper

is

of a

in use in Italy (especially Tuscany)

during the third decade of the sixteenth century, but not (cf. Briquet 5926). Far from being the model (by

before

Pisanello) used

fresco at Spello

by Pinturicchio (c.

for the

background

of his

1500/01), the Windsor dromedary

is

therefore presumably a copy after the drawing (or type of

drawing) used by Pinturicchio. Examination of the watermark has shown that it is extremely unlikely that Pisanello himself was involved in the Windsor drawing, either directly or indirectly.

Function and purpose were executed at very and were used for a wide variety of purposes. In some cases they may have been life studies, subsequently used in finished works of art, but possibly

The drawings in diverse times and

this exhibition

places,

not specifically intended for such a purpose. Ghirlandaio's

woman (No. 1 and Leonardo's drawing of arms and hands (No. 10) are cases in point. The old woman was doubtless drawn (and studied in depth) by Ghirlandaio with the prospect of the cycle of paintings in the Cappella Tornabuoni, Florence, in mind, but by the time of the painting her form and features had been subtly adjusted. Likewise, the arms and hands in No. 10 were carefully copied from a model for use in a female portrait. But how accurately they were transferred to panel will probably never be known. Leonardo's heads of St Anne and St James (Nos. 11 and 12), Raphael's studies for the Farnesina and the Stanza della Segnatura (Nos. 17 and 18), and Perino's Saints for S. Marcello al Corso (No. 31) are all instances of the artists working up studies from the life for later use in a finished painting. The same is the case with Tintoretto's back view of a man (No. 35), Domenichino's study of the head of an old

)

Jerome (No. 39), Maratta's St Francis of Sales (No. 41) and Guercino's St Francis of Assisi (No. 45). Pannini's figure studies, on both sides of the sheet (No. 5 1 ), have all the appearance of being copied from the life, and were St

.

incorporated

accurately as incidental detail in his

fairly

In other instances the drawings are the compositional

which may or may not have survived. No. 1 5 shows Leonardo working out the appropriate arrangement of figures for a Virgin and Child composition. In other cases a more advanced stage in the preparatory work is shown. Vivarini's altarpiece design studies for a finished painting,

(No. 7)

is

a rare survival indicating the unified architectu-

ral setting

involved in

many

Renaissance altarpieces:

it

incorporates both the Active architecture in the painting

and the real architecture of the frame. Chronologically the example of a compositional drawing in the exhibition is Sebastiano Ricci's drawing of the Adoration of the Magi

last

(No. 56). In addition to

its

preparatory role for paintings, natu-

drawing medium is also used in preparation for engravings, works in sculpture or architecture, and smallscale decorative objects. Salviati's drawing (No. 29) was rally the

evidently

made

with the mirror and

as the final design for the frontispiece for

Labacco's Architettura. The precise raison d'etre of Franco's

drawing of a man (No. 34) is unknown, but it may have been made specifically in connection with Franco's print of the Flagellation, rather than for (or of) a (lost) painted altarpiece. It so happens that no designs directly relating to architecture, sculpture or decorative objects are included

within this selection. The Italian figure drawings in the Royal Collection are among the greatest of their kind, and therefore seemed sensible to concentrate on them. However, the fragmentary architectural study in the corner of Leonardo's St James the Greater (No. 12) might serve as a reminder of this type of drawing. Three of the exhibited items could loosely be classed as "costume designs", although they are both less and more than this. Leonardo's Masquerade Figure (No. 13) was produced at it

I

have never seen a more finished

(BM Michelangelo 200)

thing"

great ceremonial paintings.

Michelangelo's older contemporary, Leonardo, had himself produced presentation drawings of a rather

ent type a decade or

more before. He had given

of Neptune and the tritons to his friend

a

differ-

drawing

Antonio Segni prior

Rome in 1 504. That drawing is lost, but its appearance is known through the preparatory to the latter's depature for

study at Windsor (RL 12570r). Leonardo's extraordinary

drawings (including No. 16) must also as independent works of art in their own right, although their immediate purpose is unknown. Other later examples of finished drawings depicting what could loosely be termed "landscape" include works by Guercino (No. 44) and Canaletto (Nos. 59-61). The concept of the drawing as a work of art in its own right has endured in the field of portraiture until the present day. In this selection the tradition can be traced through the self-portraits of Annibale Carracci and Bernini (Nos. 37 and 38) to the much-repeated and highly popular heads of Piazzetta (Nos. 52-55). series of Deluge

have been intended

The

tradition of collecting

drawings

The appreciation of drawings as objects worthy of admiration and acquisition thus dates back to the Italian Renaissance, and to the very earliest items in this exhibition. Because of their preparatory nature, most drawings perished in the studios in which they were made. We should not therefore ask why there are now - for instance - so few fifteenth- and sixteenth-century drawings for the

many

paintings

and other works

of art of that era, but

wonder why

there are so many. The circumstances of a drawing's survival are only rarely documented. For in-

we know

the start of the sixteenth century, while Stefano della Bella's elegant and sometimes fantastic creations (Nos. 49

stance,

and 50) were drawn just over a hundred years

they were bequeathed to his favourite pupil Francesco Melzi and thereafter were acquired by the sculptor Pompeo Leoni. The volume containing the Leonardo drawings

Michelangelo's "presentation drawings"

later.

(e.g.,

Nos. 20

and 21) occupy a special place in the history of draughtsmanship for many reasons, but notably because they were considered (by the

artist) of sufficient

quality to present to

same way as another artist might have given a painting or a piece of sculpture. In his letter of thanks for two such gifts, Tommaso de' Cavalieri informed Michelangelo that he was spending at least two hours each day in contemplating the drawings. A further

his especial friends, in the

reference to the serious appreciation of drawings at this early date occurs in a letter of c. 1538-41 from Vittoria

Colonna the

to Michelangelo, in

artist's

words:

more

"It

which she describes one of drawings of Christ on the Cross in the following is not possible to see an image better made,

and more finished and certainly I could never subtly and marvellously wrought it is. ... I have looked at it carefully in the light, with the glass, and alive

explain

12

how

that at the time of Leonardo's death in

1519, most of his drawings and papers were with him, that

which are now at Windsor was purchased from Leoni by the great English collector, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, and was transported by him to England (Figs.

AandB). must always have been among the chief collecboth by inheritance from their masters and by design. Giulio Clovio (1498-1578) is known to have been an assiduous collector of works by Michelangelo and may once have owned his drawing of the ResurArtists

tors of drawings,

rection in

the present exhibition (No. 23).

Many

of the

seventeenth-century drawings at Windsor were once owned by Carlo Maratta (1625-1713) who "succeeded in building up one of the finest collections of drawings by artists of Seicento Rome that have ever been Italian

made" (BM,

p. 9).

Maratta's collection depended very

A

.

largely

on

that

formed by Domenichino's pupil and

heir,

Francesco Raspantino, which included a vast group of drawings by Domenichino (e.g. No. 39), in addition to around 550 drawings by members of the Carracci family. It

would be

surprising

if

•4&t

4

-/ 3?r*wf> «» J #***,*

the 200 drawings by Maratta

himself (including Nos. 40 and 41), and the group of studies by his master Sacchi, had not entered the Royal

same

A„J

*f7j
, /ffan,

?*/ilrr?7is,

//,)

The Maratta collection was purchased by the Albani Pope, Clement XI in 1703, and Collection by the

route.

thus entered the Royal Collection in 1762 with other

drawings from the Albani family.

Another notable

collection

was formed by

Sir Peter Lely

(161 8-80) the greatest portraitist of the Restoration years

6.

&

y.

A

,

in England. Lely

**

may have acted as intermediary in finally

securing both the Leonardo and the Holbein drawings for

the

Crown.

Among

the

artists

particularly

represented in his collection was Parmigianino, and

be no coincidence that four small volumes

of

may

?,*m* fiCtr&i rt*tx£n>itt a /etsJZmtin*^,

fit: is.

y PtfyUr; A Ibrntft.pttyMMu^kn,

drawings by

artist

One

of

*ftiU>#eiH&ti**9

are also included in the early eighteenth-

century inventory of the Royal Collection (the Kensington Inventory: see below and Fig. C). The outer bindings of three

&ink

ri

fie.

this

i+.

Tltr.

volumes survive at Windsor today (Figs. A and B these was inscribed and dated by the engraver )

.

fauA,

fir- 8.

wellit

k?s*

-7W

iA
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Extract from Inventory

17,19 and

16

number

appears very likely that a significant now in the Royal

it

of the early Italian drawings

Collection

were already there during King Charles

I's

reign.

Other drawings in the Collection, and presumably therefore in the Kensington Inventory, were probably

acquired (with the Holbeins and possibly also the Leonardos) during the reign of King Charles II, with the assist-

ance of above.

artist-collectors

such as Lely and Gibson, as noted

A curious insight into the use that was made of the

Royal Collection

at this

time

the diary of the miniaturist

is

provided by two notes in

Mary Beale, transcribed by "Novem. borrowd of W. m

Vertue as follows: 1674. Chiffinch Esq. eleaven of his Majesties Italian drawings", and 1 677 February "borrowd 6 Italian drawings out of the Kings Collection for my sons to practice by" (Vertue IV, W.S.,XXIV, 1935-6, pp. 172-3). The inventory of King James II's collection (published by Bathoe/Vertue in 1758) includes several further references to drawings, including works by Raphael, Veronese,

and Van de Velde, but once

again,

few can

securely be identified today.

and reorganization of the albums was apparently begun in the reign of King George III, at which time the chief acquisitions of old master drawings were made. Towards the end of King George's reign the drawings collection was listed, in some detail, in two inventories (referred to as Inventory A and Inventory B). The King doubtless inherited a love of art (as well as a notable collection) from his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, whose purchases had included an important group of Poussin's works acquired from Dr Richard Mead. Following Prince Frederick's death in 1751, his eldest son, George, made his own first artistic purchases (of two volumes of flower paintings by Maria Sibylla Merian) at Dr Mead's sale in 1755. However, King George Ill's main purchases were from abroad. In 1 762, through the good services of James Stuart Mackenzie and the Royal Librarian, Richard Dalton, the collection of paintings, drawings, engravings, books, coins

,/,,,/M^r

H

information,

Had the drawings at Windsor remained in their original albums, many of our questions concerning their provenance could doubtless have been answered. The rebinding

£///>/*»-

tf/d &*//;

tl>,*,y./ /,„//,

808): "This drawing was found in an Old Bureau Kensington which contained part of the Collection of King Charles ye first, where also was preserved the Volume of Leonardo da Vinci." When we read in the same Inventory that Raphael's drawing of Poetry (P&W 792) was "from Kensington", and reconsider all the above

Callot, Goltzius

.

fad t tis/i>///.'///-rf

//// d//.'//tt ///////4 J,/d//t;

$/>*//

.

(P&W

at

.

A/ ~// .