- Museum number
- 1846,0509.176
- Description
-
Study for the decoration of the Escorial Library with four principal panels containing figures, interspersed with geometric decoration, at centre are two seated, bearded men. 1588-92
Pen and brown ink with brown wash over black chalk; several sheets overlaid
- Production date
- 1588-1592
- Dimensions
-
Height: 332 millimetres
-
Width: 485 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Lit.: A. Mayer, ''Segovia, Avila und El Eskorial'', Leipzig, 1913, p. 136; the same, ''Dibujos Originales de Maestros Españoles'', New York and Leipzig, 1920, pl. 4; F.J. Sánchez Cantón, Dibujos Españoles, Madrid, 1930, ii, pl. cxxiv; H. Bodmer in Thieme-Becker, xxxiii (1939). p. 130; Emilian Drawings, no. 115; R. Taylor, ''Architecture and Magic'' in Essays in the History of Architecture presented to Rudolf Wittkower, 1967, p. 88; D. Angulo and A.E. Pérez Sánchez, 'A Corpus of Spanish Drawings: Spanish Drawings 1400-1600', London, 1975, no. 243; J.A. Gere and P. Pouncey, ''Italian drawings in the BM, Artists working in Rome'', London, 1983, no. 275; M. Newcome Schleier in ''Felipe II, un monarca y su época: un príncipe del Renacimineto'', Madrid 1998, no.167, pp. 518-20; M. P. McDonald, 'Renaissance to Goya: Prints and drawings from Spain', exh.cat. Museo del Prado, Madrid 2012, p.63; M. P. McDonald, 'El trazo español en el British Museum: Dibujos del Renacimiento a Goya', exh. cat., Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid 2013, cat.no.1.
Transferred from Herrera to Pellegrino Tibaldi by Campbell Dodgson in 1921.
Gere & Pouncey 1983
A working drawing for the decoration of the Library of the Royal Monastery of the Escorial, near Madrid (see J. Zarco Cuevas, ''Pintores italianos en San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial'', Madrid, 1932, pp. 221f. and 250ff, and the illustrations in A.F. Calvert, ''The Escorial'', London, 1907, pls. 57-9, 173, 180-3; Venturi, ix6, figs. 322-32; Briganti, figs. 157-69; M. Lopez Serrano, El Escorial, Madrid, 1966, fot. 31). Though in itself of little artistic value, this drawing, with its annotations in Italian by the artist responsible for the decoration, and in Spanish by the architect of the building and by an unidentified court official, is of considerable documentary interest as affording a glimpse of the complicated process by which a great decorative enterprise of this kind was brought to completion.
In order satisfactorily to elucidate the drawing the decoration of the Library must be described in some detail. It is a long apartment with a barrel vault composed of seven bays divided from one another according to a symmetrical scheme. In the centre of the vault in each bay is a square fresco representing one of the Liberal Arts: from the entrance end, ''Grammar'', ''Rhetoric'', ''Dialectic'', ''Arithmetic'', ''Music'', ''Geometry'' and ''Astronomy''. On either side of each vault is a lunette containing either a window (as indicated in the drawing) or a painted cartouche, flanked by seated figures of Philosophers. The triangular vaults formed by the intersection of the lunettes with the main vault are each decorated with a pair of ''ignudi'' and an oculus through which is seen a hovering ''putto'' holding a book; another pair of ''ignudi'' in the spandrels above support the frame surrounding the painting of the Liberal Art in the centre of the vault. Below each lunette, on the upper part of the wall, is a long horizontal composition, historical, biblical or mythological, related in subject to the Liberal Art represented in that particular bay. A similar composition is at either end of the room, below the larger lunettes formed by the arch of the main vault which represent ''Philosophy'' and ''Theology''. These horizontal scenes combine to form a frieze running along the top of the windows and bookcases and broken only by pilasters of Greek-key ornament combined now and then with panels of Grotesque ornament.
The Greek-key pilasters support flat strips of the same pattern, which separate all the bays except the second and third and the fifth and sixth. Between these is a more complex arrangement dividing the whole space into two end-sections of two bays and a central one of three, and consisting of a tripartite arch, the centre member of which is a projecting strip of Grotesque ornament springing from similarly decorated piers, with on either side narrower and shallower strips of ribbon-and-foliage decoration supported on Greek-key pilasters. A band of Grotesque ornament on the vault adjoins the inner side (that is, the side towards the centre of the room) of this tripartite arch, between the inner ribbon-and-foliage strip and the Greek-key strip bounding the adjacent bay; another band of Grotesque ornament, between two Greek-key strips, divides the two bays in either end section. Immediately above the cornice, on all four bands of Grotesque ornament as well as on the centre members of the two arches, are figures of Gods or Poets in niches; on all the Greek-key strips, roundels with seated figures in yellowish-brown monochrome; and on all the ribbon-and-foliage strips, similarly coloured upright rectangles with standing figures.
Every one of these architectural elements is indicated in 1846,0509.176, which epitomises, in the smallest possible compass, the entire decorative scheme apart from the paintings in the centre of the vault and in the two end lunettes. The two main arches are composed of the side section on the l. completed with a balancing ribbon-and-foliage strip and with the further addition to the l. of the centre and l.-hand members of the r.-hand section, while the r.-hand section, with the r.-hand member completed to match its counterpart, corresponds with the division between the two bays in the two outer sections of the vault. The note against the r.-hand member of the l.-hand section, "la corispondenza di questo membro sta presso la muraglia dele teste de la libreria", refers to the fact that there is a strip of ribbon and foliage, not Greek-key, at either extremity of the vault, immediately above the two end lunettes.
1846,0509.176 does not correspond with any particular section of the decoration, but is made up of elements which occur in various bays. So far as we can tell from the illustrations of the Library at our disposal, each element (except presumably the composition in the frieze) corresponds exactly with the finished work. We have not been able to identify the Philosophers in the lunette, but the figures in the niches are ''Homer'' and ''Pindar'' who in the Library occur on opposite sides of the arch between the second and third bays (Calvert, op. cit., pls. 181 and 183); the upper pair of ignudi occurs in the fourth bay (Venturi, ix6, fig. 330); the 'putto' in the oculus and probably also the ''ignudi'' below, in the second bay (Calvert, op. cit., pl. 181); while the subject sketched in the frieze, ''The Building of the Tower of Babel'', is one of the two ''histories'' illustrating ''Grammar'', in the first bay (see Zarco Cuevas, p. 257).
When acquired, 1846,0509.176 was attributed, on the strength of the two signed inscriptions, to Juan de Herrera, who according to Mayer (Thieme-Becker, xvi (1923), p. 541) was chief architect of the Escorial from 1567 until 1593, when he handed over to his chief assistant Francisco de Mora, referred to in the annotation lower r. Campbell Dodgson transferred the drawing to Tibaldi in 1921. Mayer, apparently the first to observe the connection with the Escorial, accepted the old attribution (he mistakenly describes the ''drawing'' as signed) and argued that it must establish Herrera's responsibility for the total design of the decoration, Tibaldi's share being limited to designing and executing the figures and ''histories'' within the plan conceived by Herrera. Taylor reached the same conclusion, arguing that Herrara s correspondence, the choice of books in his library, etc. reveal a particular interest in ''Hermetic'' philosophy; and that since the Library decoration contains allusions to this philosophy, the iconographie programme is likely to have been devised by Herrera and not by Fray José de Sigüenza, to whom it is traditionally credited. Whether or not this was so, the fact is in no way established by the present drawing, which Taylor, (who had failed to observe its composite character), describes as a study for the west side of the bay with ''Grammatica'': the comments inscribed by Herrera on the drawing are almost all confined to details of the architectural framework, and the note "en este campo se podra pintar lo q(ue) paresciere ser mejor", which Meyer interpreted as proof that it was Herrera who decided the subjects to be represented, refers to a small section of frieze which in the event was filled with nothing more complicated than a panel of Grotesque ornament.
Nothing in the documents published by Zarco Cuevas indicates that anyone other than Tibaldi was responsible for either the general scheme or the design of the individual elements; though, as his annotations on the present drawing show, Herrera did intervene with comments on small points of detail. The documents record that Tibaldi was working in the Escorial from 1586 to 1593; and on the decoration of the Library not earlier than June/July 1590 and not later than 22 January 1592 (see Zarco Cuevas, pp. 250 and 257f.). A record of payment dated 3 September 1591describes everything above the cornice as completed. The first payment for work below the cornice is dated 12 October 1591 (Zarco Cuevas, pp. 252f) and the sixteen ''histories'' in the frieze were valued on 22 January 1592. The nature of Herrera's comments on the drawing and the fact that they are confined to the frieze, together with the to all appearances exact correspondence between the figures in the upper part and those on the vault itself, suggests that this is not, as might at first be supposed, a preliminary 'modello', but an intermediate one, made , it would seem - when the decoration above the cornice was already completed, and certainly made before anything below it was begun.
The drawing itself, especially in the upper part, is so schematic and lifeless as to suggest that Tibaldi delegated the task of producing this diagram to one of his studio assistants. If his own hand is to be seen anywhere, it is perhaps in the somewhat freer sketch for the still unexecuted composition in the frieze, but even here we feel considerable doubt: the livelier and more spontaneous impression which this detail makes may be due simply to its relative lack of finish.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1998/9 Oct-Jan, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 'Felipe II, un Principe del Renacimiento'
2012/13 Sept-Jan, London, British Museum, ‘Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain’
2013 March-June, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, ‘El trazo español en el British Museum …’
2013, Aug-Nov, Sydney, AGNSW, 'Renaissance to Goya'
2013-4, Dec-Mar, Santa Fe, New Mexico Museum of Modern Art, 'Renaissance to Goya'
- Acquisition date
- 1846
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1846,0509.176