drawing
- Museum number
- 1885,0509.1632
- Description
-
Portrait of Pius V after a painting by Bartolomeo Passarotti; head and shoulders, three quarters face turned to right, halo round skull cap
Watercolour
- Production date
-
1809-1873
-
1529-1592
- Dimensions
-
Height: 143 millimetres
-
Width: 101 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- When this work came into the collection, it was known to be after a painting but it was not certain which one. At one point it was thought it might be after an El Greco painting but in fact there are two paintings it may be based on. One is a three-quarter-length portrait by Bartolomeo Passarotti. The 'original' painting is now lost, but another version (with workshop) is now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland (37.453). Cromek's watercolour follows the colouring of the Baltimore version closely but is only a detail of the head and in the opposite direction to the painting (see Joaneath Spicer in David Franklin (ed.), 'From Raphael to Carracci: The art of papal Rome' (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009), pp.282-4, no.83). The Baltimore painting was in a Roman collection in the nineteenth century (information from Donato Esposito). There is a painting by Scipione Pulzone of just the head and facing in the same direction as Cromek's version, to which it is very close, but its present location and its location in the 19th century are not known. Interestingly, Cromek shows a halo above the Pope's head which does not appear in either of the oil paintings.
In his catalogue of the British Drawings in the BM collection in 1898, Laurence Binyon mistakenly described it as a portrait of Pius VII (d.1823), noting he was the Pope who crowned Napoleon I and was imprisoned by him.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1885
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1885,0509.1632