drawing;
sketch-book
- Museum number
- 1862,0712.415
- Description
-
Aspertini album (so-called London II):
Folio 22 recto (drawing numbered 43): Right half of a copy from Perugino's 'Donation of the Keys to St Peter' in the Sistine chapel
Folio 22 verso (drawing numbered 44): Three male nudes prostrated before a tabernacle, in the background architectural structure with statues in niches
Recto and verso: black chalk with brown wash
- Production date
- 1530-1540
- Dimensions
-
Height: 219 millimetres
-
Width: 159 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- For comment on the album to which this sheet belongs, see 1862,0712.394
f. 22 recto (no. 43)
This is a copy of the right half of Perugino's 'Donation of the Keys' and together with the verso of the previous sheet it was intended to be one composition. It is nonetheless odd that Aspertini decides to concentrate all the figures in this half. He only includes Jesus and the Apostoles, but by putting Christ in the middle he intentionally wants the spectator's eye to focus on the right half of the composition, even though he might have intended to add some other figures on the left half of the opening. The buildings on the background and their setting are approximately based on the ones in the fresco, but Aspertini has totally forsaken the middle ground by shifting them dramatically forward, deepening instead the landscape at the back. Some of the Apostles' faces and expressions are vignette like, as for example the one directly behind Jesus on the left, with an exaggerated tilt of the head, or the second one to the right of Christ, whose head goes in one direction, his long beard seems to be blown in the opposite and his very marked pupils give him a rather bizarre expression. Faietti observes that the kneeling figure of Saint Peter recalls the one in a drawing of the 'Assumption of the Virgin' in Windsor Castle (Faietti-Scaglietti, cat. dis. 37, pp. 252-3).
Lit.: P.P. Bober, 'Drawings after the Antique by Amico Aspertini. Sketchbooks in the British Museum', London 1957, pp. 83-4; M. Faietti-D. Scaglietti Kelescian , 'Amico Aspertini', Modena 1995
f. 22 verso (no. 44)
The curious architectural solutions on this sheet bring to mind a series of panels recently rediscovered in Bologna (cf. R. Martorelli in 'Amico Aspertini. Artista bizzarro nell'età di Dürer e Raffaello', exhibition catalogue Bologna 2008/09, pp. 236-7). 1862,0712.403, 409, 410, 423v, 429, 430, 431
Lit.: P.P. Bober, 'Drawings after the Antique by Amico Aspertini. Sketchbooks in the British Museum', London 1957, p. 84.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1862
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1862,0712.415