Old Master drawingsThere are 9 items
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Design for the decoration of a room with four window bays, each bay surmounted by a broken pediment, above which is a gallery with putti and musicians (for the Sala di Costantino in the Lateran Palace?).
Rome, c. 1596-1600Drawing, executed in pen and brown ink with grey wash, 240 × 394 mm.
A drawing from Cassiano dal Pozzo’s “Museo Cartaceo”, recording alternative schemes for the decoration of a room approximately 61 feet in length with four, irregularly spaced rectangular windows, precisely matching the Salone di Costantino in the Lateran Palace built by Sixtus V in 1585-1589. The project shown was not executed and the room was decorated later by others. The sheet was exhibited in Rome in 2000 and in Biella in 2001-2002 with an attribution to Cherubino Alberti. The editors of the volumes devoted to architectural and topographical drawings from the Paper Museum commissioned and collected by Cassiano dal Pozzo, have catalogued it as “Late Sixteenth-century Italian” (The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: a catalogue raisonné. Series A, Antiquities and architecture; pt. 10: Renaissance and later architecture and ornament, by Paul Davies and David Hemsoll, [London] 2013, II, pp.410-411 no. 153, reproduced).It is now apparent that Cassiano collected avidly both “artistic” and “documentary” drawings made before the birth of the Paper Museum. The sources of these drawings are unknown; it is supposed that some were purchased; some received as gifts from Cassiano’s numerous correspondents, and that others entered the Paper Museum by bequest. These drawings extended the encyclopaedic range of the Paper Museum and it is speculated that they were acquired to assist the education of the “giovani ben intendenti del disegno” whom Cassiano employed.
The Tuscan origin of the Alberti family and their use of quadratura perspective were major recommendations to Cassiano dal Pozzo and he owned many works by them, including at least four drawings by Cherubino and two paintings by his younger brother Giovanni (1558-1601). During the 1630s, Cassiano commissioned for his “Museo Cartaceo” a set of copies of drawings of architectural fragments by their father, Alberto Alberti (1526-1598). He employed a relation, Pierfrancesco Alberti (1584-1638), to make line drawings and diagrams for his projected publication of Leonardo’s Trattato della Pittura.
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An early Imperial marble altar or statue base, carved with bovine heads supporting a heavy filleted garland (after the altar now preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Lyon)
Rome, c. 1625Drawing, executed in pencil, pen and brown ink with wash, 293 × 225 mm.
This drawing of an unusually elaborate early Imperial altar or statue base was commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) for his celebrated “Museo Cartaceo”. Although better-known as a specialist in natural history, the draughtsman Vincenzo Leonardi also supplied Cassiano with drawings after the antique. In 1625, he was the only artist to accompany Cassiano on a legation led by Cardinal Francesco Barberini to France, where he documented for Cassiano objects of botanical, ornithological, geological, and archaeological interest. The altar recorded on our sheet is identified with one now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Lyon; it is speculated that it was already in France in 1625, and was drawn by Leonardi on this trip. Two other aspects of the altar by the same hand and also from the “Museo Cartaceo” are in the so-called “Franks volumes” at the British Museum (volume I, folios 150-151). Our drawing was exhibited in Rome together with other drawings and paintings from the Dal Pozzo collections (Galleria nazionale d’arte antica, Palazzo Barberini, 29 September-26 November 2000) and also in Biella (Museo del territorio Biellese, 16 December 2001-16 March 2002).
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Panel relief: a maenad striding to right, carrying flowers; two maidens adorning a candelabrum (‘Nuptiale Festum’)
Rome, c. 1630Drawing, executed in pen and brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, laid to Stirling-Maxwell album sheet of wove paper, 128 × 288 mm.
This drawing of a panel relief showing maidens draping a candelabrum (‘Nuptiale Festum’) was commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) for his ‘Museo Cartaceo’, and later passed through the collections of Pope Clement XI, his nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani, King George III, and the antiquary Sir William Stirling-Maxwell. In the early sixteenth century, the marble relief was located in the atrium of Old St. Peter’s in Rome; after 1617, it was installed with its pendant relief of five female figures dancing (‘Nuptiales Choreae’) above opposite doors in the Salone of the Casino of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, on the Pincian hill. Its fame grew steadily and was assured by its inclusion (again with its pendant) in Perrier’s Icones (1645) and in Bartoli and Bellori’s Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum (1693). In 1807, the relief and its pendant were sold to Napoleon Bonaparte and sent to Paris; since 1817, both have been displayed in the Louvre.
The sheet was exhibited in 2001 (I segreti di un collezionista: le straordinarie raccolte di Cassiano dal Pozzo 1588-1657, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museo del territorio Biellese, Biella, from 16 December 2001-16 March 2002, edited by Francesco Solinas, Roma: Edizioni De Luca, 2001, p.230 no. 140, with reproduction).
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Susanna and the Elders
Italy, 17th centuryDrawing, executed with the point of the brush in black wash, heightened with white, 360 × 307 mm.
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Study of the Borghese vase; Study of an antique vase from the Albani collection
Rome, c. 1710?Two drawings, uniformly executed in pen and dark brown ink and brown wash over black chalk, laid to Stirling-Maxwell album sheets of wove paper, 408 × 272 mm and 407 × 267 mm. Uniformly framed.
These decorative drawings were extracted in 1990 from one of the two albums of “Drawings by Italian Old Masters. Sculpture” assembled circa 1871 by the Scottish antiquary Sir William Stirling Maxwell. The two albums contained mostly drawings commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1637) for his celebrated “Museo Cartaceo”, a corpus of drawings of antiquities in Rome. After Cassiano’s death, the “Museo Cartaceo” was augmented by his younger brother, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo, then by Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who incorporated drawings inherited from his uncle, Pope Clement XI, including a hoard accumulated by the artist Carlo Maratti. While our two drawings might have been introduced into the “Museo Cartaceo” by Carlo Antonio, before ill health brought his collecting to a halt in 1685, it is more likely that they were executed in the eighteenth century, and were added by Cardinal Albani. Both vases are drawn in mirror image of the originals, suggesting that they could be preparatory drawing for an unrealised suite of large-format engravings of Roman antiquities (they do not correspond to any known prints).
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Group of three sketchbooks, the first with a frontispiece lettered: Livro de Ioao Estrebèle, em q[ue] tràta, das enmendas dos sevs, mestres, con de mostracoiñs, dos sevs, pe[n]samentos. A.D. MDCCXLII. Romæ
Rome, c. 1734-1742Three volumes, I (227 × 167 mm): 80 ff. (of which 40 ff. are blank). II (220 × 132 mm): 93 ff. (of which 4 ff. are blank). III (188 × 130 mm): 55 ff., and three sheets loosely inserted. Contemporary vellum over pasteboards.
Provenance: Almirante Carlos Braga, Porto (c. 1940) – auction conducted by Livraria Manuel Ferreira, “Biblioteca do Dr. José Joaquim de Oliveira Bastos”, Porto, 4 November 2008, lot 2.
Three sketchbooks of a young Portuguese artist in early Settecento Rome, successively a pupil there of Marco Benefial (1684-1764) and Agostino Masucci (1691-1768). They contain drawings after antiquities (or studio casts of antique sculpture); drapery studies; figure studies (a few possibly from live models, but no nudes are present); drawn copies of paintings by Old Masters (notably Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican Loggie, works located by Glama Ströberle in the Colonna Gallery, and “in the house” of his teacher, Marco Benefial); drawn copies of other studio materials, notably topographical drawings or prints (of Pisa, Siena, Mallorca, etc.), together with views of Rome probably made from direct observation; and portrait sketches (both of his teachers were prolific portrait painters). Some drawings record Glama Ströberle’s own compositions; annotations placed next to these relate the criticisms and contributions of Benefial and Masucci. At the front of one sketchbook (here designated, Sketchbook [I]), Glama Ströberle writes that his “main reason for compiling this book” was to “show the large difference that exists between my first and only teacher in Rome [Benefial] and the one who followed … him” [Masucci].
Sketchbook [I] contains a valuable, autobiographical statement. Glama Ströberle writes that he studied in Lisbon for six years with Francisco Vieira Lusitano and “various masters”, and went to Rome with the encouragement of the sculptor Caetano Pace “Romano” and financial assistance from his father, arriving there on 18 October 1734. Vieira Lusitano advised him to study with Marco Benefial, and he states that he received Benefial’s instruction for seven years, supported by the patronage of Jose Maria da Fonseca e Évora (minister for Portugal in Rome, Dom Joao V’s principal agent in the commission of works of art for Mafra). In 1741, Évora returned to Portugal (to become Bishop of Porto), and about the same time Glama Ströberle’s father died, causing Glama Ströberle to return to Portugal. While there, he found a new patron in Alexandre de Gusmão, a former special envoy to the Vatican, perhaps not incidentally a collector of paintings by Vieira Lusitano, and two months later Glama Ströberle was back in Rome. According to Glama Ströberle’s statement, De Gusmão stipulated that he become a student of Agostino Masucci, the past Principe (1736-1738) of the Accademia di San Luca, and in 1741 one of the leading painters in Rome.
This autobiographical statement supplements (and corrects) the notices of Glama Ströberle written by Machado, an eighteenth-century painter who chronicled the lives of his fellow artists (Collecçao de memorias relativas às vidas dos pintores, printed 1823) and Saraiva (Lista de alguns artistas Portuguezes, printed 1839, his entry based on an unpublished memoir by João Chiape, who had been a pupil of Glama Ströberle). Several biographical details given by Gerardo Casale, “Rapporti tra l’Accademia di San Luca e i Portoghesi a Roma” in Giovanni V di Portogallo (1707-1750) e la cultura romana del suo tempo (Rome 1995), pp.377-384, are proved erroneous: for instance, a claim that Glama Ströberle arrived in Rome in 1720.
Most – if not all – the drawings in sketchbook [I] appear to be original compositions of Glama Ströberle: a series of seventeen episodes from the Old Testament, executed in pen and ink and wash; twelve scenes from classical mythology, similarly executed; five studies executed in red chalk; and three more finished compositions in pen and ink and wash. These drawings date from 1734 until circa 1742 (i.e. during Glama Ströberle’s period of study under Benefial). Sketchbook [II] is inscribed “begun in the year 1741” and contains copies of paintings (or bozzetti) which Glama Ströberle locates in Benefial’s studio (“em sua casa particular”), views of Rome, Naples, Civitavecchia, Pisa and other cities in Italy, and drawings made in Portugal during Glama Ströbele’s brief visit in 1741. Other drawings in the same sketchbook perhaps were made after his final return home, such as one of the “Castelo de Santa Maria da Feira” and another of the church of Saint John Facundo at Vinhais, which has a lengthy caption added in September 1777. Sketchbook [III] likewise is a mixture of Roman and Portuguese drawings and inscriptions (including comparisons of the measurements of the cathedrals of Porto and Braga), none precisely dated.
The three sketchbooks first came to notice in 1940, when interest focused on the topographical views of Portugal, and in particular on “Castelo de Santa Maria da Feira” (II, f. 71 recto): that sheet was featured in Portucale: revista ilustrada de cultura, literária, scientifia, e artistica 13 (January-February 1940), and again in Arquivo do Distrito de Aveiro 8 (1942). Two other sheets were published by Pedro Vitorino, “Museus, Galerias e Colecções XXV. Álbuns de artistas” in Revista de Guimares 53 (January-June 1943). The sketchbooks are next mentioned by Jorge de Mello Azevedo, “O Pintor João Glama Stroeberle: Esboço biográfico e crítico” in Boletim da Academia Portuguesa de Ex-Libris 9 (January 1964), pp.1-11; Paula Mesquita Santos, “Croquis, academias e outros estudos de João Glama no Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga” in Vária escrita: cadernos do Gabinete de Estudos Históricos e Documentais 8 (2001), pp.161-189, where (p.171 no. 2985) a drawing of “Apollo and Daphne” in Lisbon is compared to one included here ([I], f.29 recto). -
A survey of Kilkea one of the Manors of the Right Hon.ble James Earl of Kildare by J. Rocque 1760
Dublin, 1760Album of drawings, comprising frontispiece and 33 sheets, executed in pencil, ink, and wash, the frontispiece a fine architectural capriccio signed lower left by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, the plans (numbered 1-33) have their titles inscribed within decorative cartouches, of which six (see below) incorporate local views (three of these signed by Matthew Wren, the others unsigned and here attributed to Hamilton), sheet dimensions 530 × 740 mm.This atlas of manuscript plans (frontispiece and thirty-three drawings in pencil, ink, and wash) is one of a set of eight oblong folio volumes comprising a complete survey of the estates in County Kildare, Ireland, of James FitzGerald (1722-1773), 20th Earl of Kildare and 1st Duke of Leinster. The eight volumes came to light in November 1963, when the set was offered for sale as separate lots in a Sotheby’s auction. The atlases of the manors of manors of Athy (1756) and Kildare (1757) afterwards migrated into the Library of Trinity College Dublin; Castledermot (1758) into the National Library of Ireland; Woodstock (1756) into the British Library; Maynooth (1757) into Cambridge University Library; and Graney (1758) into the British Art Center of Yale University. Until recently, the atlas of the manor of Kilkea (1760) here offered for sale could not be located; the atlas of the manor of Rathangan (1760) is still lost.
The identities of the draughtsmen who collaborated to produce the eight volumes of the Kildare estate survey are not all known. In the entire set of 170 plans, only one frontispiece and three cartouches are signed. That signed frontispiece is a virtuoso drawing by Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808), who went on to become ‘one of the finest painters ever to come out of Ireland’ (Crookshank & Glin). Hamilton’s “little masterpiece” occurs in the atlas of the manor of Kilkea, here offered for sale. The three signed cartouches also appear in the Kilkea atlas. They contain views of local houses and landscape and were drawn by an Irish surveyor, Matthew Wren. The unsigned map decoration in the Kilkea atlas is here divided between Hamilton (twenty-seven sheets) and Wren (three sheets).
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Studies of putti with scrolling forms, lying on the ground, and a mask design with scrolling forms
[Bologna], c. 1760?Drawing, executed in pen and brown ink over black chalk, laid down on 19th-century mount, inscribed on the mount Maura Tasia and 5 W L 48, 135 × 347 mm.
The old attribution on the mount to Mauro Tesi is confirmed by similarities to a drawing published by Richard Wunder in 1965 (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1960/2.20). Both sheets are executed in the same manner in Tesi’s distinctive pen style, and are strongly reminiscent of Stefano della Bella’s ornament prints. The Michigan drawing, in fact, carried an attribution to Della Bella before Wunder associated it with etchings by Tesi in imitation of prints by Della Bella. Comparable drawings by Tesi of decorative friezes incorporating masks and satyr’s heads, garlands, and infants, are in Rome, Geneva, Sammlung Schloss Fachsenfeld, Venice, and New York; some were etched by Clemente Nicoli, others apparently by the artist himself. Mauro Tesi, who died at the age of 36, had taught himself by copying the drawings of the great Bolognese masters of the previous century, Agostino Mitelli and Angelo Michele Colonna. All kinds of ornament interested him, but soon a natural predisposition towards architectural decoration asserted itself.
Our drawing was extracted in 1990 from an album (“Drawings by Old Italian Masters. Sculpture”) assembled circa 1871 by Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Baronet, of Pollok (1818-1878). The two albums contained mostly drawings commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1637) for his celebrated “Museo Cartaceo”. After Cassiano’s death, the “Museo Cartaceo” was augmented by his younger brother, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo, then by Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who incorporated drawings inherited from his uncle, Pope Clement XI, including a hoard accumulated by the artist Carlo Maratti. This drawing most probably is a sheet introduced to the corpus by Cardinal Albani, whose collection was sold in 1762 to James Adam as agent for George III. About 1000 drawings were appropriated by the Royal Librarian, Richard Dalton (1715-1791), and came onto the market at Dalton’s deceased sale (11-19 May 1791), passing thereafter through the collections of several antiquaries, eventually into the possession of Stirling Maxwell.
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The interior of a sanctuary "in honour of the three arts", depicting the rotunda of the "Temple de Goût" and entrance to the "Temple a la Peinture" with its altar beyond
[Paris], 1762Drawing, executed in pencil and brown wash, the tablet at left drawn on an overlay with an indistinct pencil inscription, laid within a black ink border to a sheet of 18th-century paper, 198 × 360 mm.An interior view of the “Temple des Arts”, a monument honouring Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture on a triangular plan, where each one of the arts has a temple connected to the central one of Taste. “It is hard to prove the exact function of Dumont’s sanctuary, but it may have been conceived as a building for discussions on the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, a kind of academy of fine arts” (Marcin Fabiański).
![Livro de Ioao Estrebèle, / em q[ue] tràta, das enmendas /...](/resize.php?path=img/p/3/2/4/2/3242.jpg&width=189&height=250 "Livro de Ioao Estrebèle, / em q[ue] tràta, das enmendas / dos sevs, mestres, con de / mostracoiñs, dos sevs, pe[n]- / samentos. / A.D. MDCCXLII. Romæ. (I, folio 1r)")
