- Museum number
- 1895,0915.439
- Description
-
An evangelist; whole-length, seen from behind, with head in profile to right, standing on a circular base.
Brush drawing in brown wash, heightened with white, on green-brown prepared paper.
Verso: Nude woman standing, holding two torches in her left hand; wearing a head-dress.
Brush drawing in brown wash, heightened with white, on green-brown prepared paper.
- Production date
- 1430 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 251 millimetres
-
Width: 140 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The style of the drawing is Tuscan, something between late Gothic and early Renaissance, as was recognised by Robinson when he tentatively attributed the drawing to Ghiberti. Degenhart and Schmitt suggested that the figure's pose and her 'kalathiskoi' (the open basketwork headdress) are based on bacchic dancers found on a 1st century A.D. Roman candelabrum base originally in a church in Tivoli, and now in the Museo Archeologico, Venice (Bober and Rubinstein, no. 89). A similar base once in a private collection in Darmstadt is illustrated by Degenhart and Schmitt (I-2, fig. 398, p. 295). The woman's headdress is illustrated in Herald's study of Renaiisance costume as an example of a 'balzo', the wire or possibly willow understructure worn by Italian woemn from the early 1400s to support and give shape to a textile covering.
Lit.: J.C. Robinson, 'Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters, forming the Collection of John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Esq.', London, 1876, no. 3 (as Ascribed to Lorenzo Ghiberti); B. Berenson, 'Drawings of the Florentine Painters', Chicago, 1938, II, no. 176A, III, fig. 24 (as School of Fra Angelico); A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 273, II, pls. CCXXXV, CCXXXVI; B. Degenhart and A. Schmitt, 'Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen, 1300-1450, Süd-und Mittelitalien', Berlin, 1968, I-2, no. 194, II-4, pl. 215c-d (circle of Ghiberti); J. Herald, 'Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400-1500', London and New Jersey, 1981, fig. 21; F. Ames-Lewis and J. Wright, in exhib. cat., Nottingham, University Art Gallery and London, Victoria and Albert, 'Drawing in the Italian Renaissance Workshop', 1983, p. 177; P.P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, 'Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture', London, 1986, p. 122
Popham & Pouncey 1950
The Evangelist (S. John?) on the recto is drawn from a statue mounted on a low circular base, which rests on two balks of timber.
The style is Tuscan, something between late Gothic and early Renaissance, as was recognized by Robinson when he tentatively ascribed this drawing to Ghiberti. The figure of the evangelist resembles that of God the Father in Uccello's lunette of the 'Creation of Adam' in the Chiostro Verde (Van Marle, x, fig. 147) in stiffness of articulation, cast of drapery, and size of halo. Uccello's fresco is usually dated soon after 1430. Still closer affinities, as Cesare Brandi has pointed out to us, exist with the work of Paolo Schiavo, several of whose frescoes are reproduced by Offner, 'Italian Primitives at Yale', 1927, fig. 14d ff. Antal has suggested that this enlivenment of late Gothic forms by means of demure experiments in naturalism (e.g. the foreshortening of the r. arm of the figure on the verso) points to Siena rather than to Florence.
Berenson lists the drawing with "following (in the widest sense of the word) of F[ra] A[ngelico]' and dates it 1440-50.
Literature: JCR 3; BB 176 A, fig. 24 (recto); Van Marle, Iconographie de l'art profane, The Hague, i, 1931, pp. 501 f., fig. 494 (verso).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2017 5-28 September, BM, G90a, The Age of Gozzoli
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.439
