- Museum number
- 1895,0915.1060
- Description
-
Sts Domitilla, Nereus, and Achilleus; with three angels above
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over graphite
- Production date
- 1608 (c.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 148 millimetres
-
Width: 109 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Attribution of this drawing has oscillated between Rubens and Van Dyck, but Logan supports the attribution to Rubens. It clearly relates to Rubens’s project for the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome (also known as the Chiesa Nuova) that he completed in 1608. Of the three paintings on slate Rubens produced for the chapel. the righthand part corresponds to the subject of the present drawing. The figure of Saint Achilleus in the foreground is based on the lost Statue of a Man in a Toga that was in the Cesi collection in Rome and could have been studied by Rubens in summer 1606. A drawing that corresponds with the lefthand part is mounted with the present sheet but this drawing is a copy by another hand, (for comment see inv. no.1895,0915.1061). The present drawing compares more closely in technique and style with the preparatory drawing in the Albertina for the central panel (inv. 8231) which is accepted to be by Rubens and its companion piece for the lefthand part in the Musée Condé of Saint Gregory, Maurus and Papianus (inv.V324bis).
Lit: J. Held, ‘Rubens and the Vita Beati P. Ignatti Loiolae of 1609’ in Rubens before 1620, ed. J.R. Martin, Princeton, 1972, p.98; J. Rowlands, 'Rubens: Drawings and Sketches, exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum, 1977, no.30a; J. Held, 'Rubens: Selected Drawings' (New York, 1986), no. 42 for the Vienna sheet; A.-M. Logan with K. L. Belkin, 'The Drawings of Peter Paul Rubens. A critical catalogue, Volume One 1590–1608', Turnhout, 2021, no. 202
Entry from J. Rowlands, 'Rubens: Drawings & Sketches', exhibition catalogue, London, British Museum, 1977:
This and 1895,0915.1061 mounted with it have been variously described by scholars in the past. Hind regarded both as free copies by Van Dyck based on Rubens's Chiesa Nuova altarpiece finished in October 1608. Glück-Haberditzl accepted them as by Rubens and as sketches for this commission. Held has recently discussed the present drawing in connection with a drawing in the Louvre which he has identified as for an engraving in a Life of St Ignatius published in Rome in 1609 (see Rowlands 1977 cat. nos.27 and 28). The British Museum drawing is considered by Held to be a study for the right-hand part of the altarpiece produced as a substitute in 1608 following the abandonment of the first painted version finished in June 1607, now in Grenoble. It had been rejected by the Oratorian Fathers because reflections prevented one from seeing the painting properly.
Rubens radically redesigned the altarpiece. Instead of a single canvas with the sacred painting of the Virgin and Child above an arch, below which saints are grouped, the composition is spread over three panels of slate, a material used to avoid disturbing reflections. The central panel contains a tabernacle for the sacred painting, surrounded by a host of worshipping angels. On each of the side panels are grouped three saints. Those in 1895,0915.1060 correspond but, by no means slavishly, with the saints on the right, and those in the following drawing (1895,0915.1061) with the saints on the left.
There is a preparatory drawing for the central panel in the Albertina (Glück-Haberditzl, 54), which in its pen work is closely allied to the present drawing. The same kinship does not, however, extend to the other British Museum drawing which at first sight appears to be a companion to it. Despite the fact that the provenance of the two drawings is identical, one is bound to question the status of this second drawing which has been described by Glück-Haberditzl as an early idea for the second altarpiece on slate. It was considered as earlier than the sketch at Chantilly (Glück-Haberditzl, 53) which is closer than it in its proportions to the final painting. This second drawing (1895,0915.1061) lacks the vigour of Rubens, and technically, particularly in the application of the washes, has no parallel elsewhere in Rubens's early drawings. Hind attributed it to Van Dyck on the strength of the inscription, which he took to be a signature.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1977 BM, Rubens drawings and sketches, no.30(a)
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.1060
