- Museum number
- 1895,0915.788
- Description
-
A seated prophet in profile to left
Pen and brown ink
Verso: A seated prophet turned to left, looking up
Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1389-1438
- Dimensions
-
Height: 235 millimetres
-
Width: 211 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- This is one of twelve drawings (a thirteenth is a sinopia underdrawing of a fresco) fully accepted as by Stefano da Verona in Karet's 2002 monograph. All the works on paper are figure studies in pen, for the most part drawn with considerable energy and vigour, and were most likely intended as a source of figural ideas for Stefano and his workshop. Karet suggests that the drawings were once in a sketchbook or sketchbooks, although the absence of any physical evidence such as stitchmarks or numbering make this hypothesis impossible to verify. Equally impossible to prove is the suggestion by Fiocco that both sides are studies for the lost Prophets painted by Stefano in the Rama chapel, S. Francesco in Mantua (reproduced in E. Moench, 'Stefano da Verona: la mort critique d'un peintre', in 'Hommage à Michel Laclotte : etudes sur la peinture du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance', Paris, 1994, figs. 73-6).
Lit.: J.C. Robinson, 'Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters, forming the Collection of John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Esq', London, 1876, no. 122 (as Early North Italian School, XVc); K.T. Parker, 'North Italian Drawings of the Quattrocento', London, 1927, no. 4, p. 23; A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 254, II, pl. CCXVI (with previous literature); G. Fiocco, 'Disegni di Stefano da Verona', "Proporzioni", 3, 1950, p. 59, fig. 12; A. Schmitt, 'Eine Unbekannte Zeichnun des Stefano di Giovanni da Verona', in ' Per Luigi Grassi, disegno e disegni', Rimini, 1998, p. 28, fig. 7; E. Karet, 'The Drawings of Stefano da Verona and his Circle and the Origins of Collecting in Italy: a Catalogue Raisonné', Philadelphia, 2002, no. 13, pp. 78-81 (with further literature)
Popham & Pouncey 1950
Robinson seems to have been the first to ascribe the sheet to a North Italian artist. He suggested tentatively that it might be by a Lombard, "a sculptor rather than a painter". The attribution to Stefano already occurs in the Vasari Society's publication and is now generally accepted on the basis of the close resemblance to Stefano's signed 'Adoration of the Magi' in the Brera, dated 1435. The drawing is presumably likewise a late work.
Literature: JCR 341; A. M. Hind, Vasari Society, First Series, iv (1908/9), 13 and 14; Van Marle, vii (1926), p. 278, figs. 182 and 183; K. T. Parker, North Italian Drawings, 1927, pl. 4; B. Degenhart, in Thieme-Becker, xxxi, p. 528.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1983 Feb-Mar, Nottingham UAG, 'Italian Drawings', no. 26
1983 Mar-May, V&A, 'Italian Drawings', no. 26
1996, BM, 'Old Master Drawings from the Malcolm Collection', no.1
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.788