- Museum number
- 1895,0915.789
- Description
-
Portrait of an unknown man wearing a hat; head and shoulders turned and looking to left
Brush drawing in brown wash, heightened with white (partly oxidised), over black chalk, on pale blue paper
- Production date
- 1475-1500
- Dimensions
-
Height: 344 millimetres
-
Width: 249 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Venetian late XVc.
Attributed to Masaccio in the Wellesley sale. It was attributed to Antonello da Messina by Morelli, an opinion rejected by all subsequent scholars.
Lit.: J.C. Robinson, 'Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters, forming the Collection of John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Esq', London, 1876, no. 342 (as North Italian c. 1480); G. Morelli (I. Lermolieff), 'Kunstkritische Studien über Italienische Malerei. Die Galerie zu München und Dresden', Leipzig, 1891, p. 254, FIG. 254 (as Antonello da Messina); H. Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, 'The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries', New York, 1944, no. A 50, p. 39 (rejected as by Antonello da Messina); A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 328, II, pl. CCLXXXII (with previous literature); D.A. Brown, 'Andrea Solario', Milan, 1987, under no. 47, p. 210
Popham & Pouncey 1950
Attributed to Masaccio in the Wellesley Sale, and described by Robinson in the Malcolm Catalogue as North Italian, c. 1480. Morelli attributed it to Antonello da Messina and considered it to be a study for the portrait in the Louvre dated 1475, said to represent a 'condottiere'. This opinion has very rightly not found acceptance. L. Venturi, Hadeln, and Lauts are in agreement that the drawing has the appearance of being a copy (Venturi and Lauts suggest, after Andrea Solario). The hesitant brush-strokes and deficient modelling certainly seem to indicate a copyist's hand; and it may well be that several years had elapsed since the execution of the original (datable by the costume c. 1470-90) if Meder is correct in saying that 'carta azzurra' was not manufactured until about 1500.
Literature: JCR 342; (C. Ephrussi), Catalogue descriptif des dessins . . . exposés à l'École des Beaux-Arts, 1879, no. 189; G. Morelli, Die Galerien zu München und Dresden, 1891, p. 254 (repr.); L. Venturi, Le origini della pittura veneziana, 1907, p. 234; N. Scalia, Rassegna d'arte, xiii (1913), p. 183, repr. p. 180; the same, Antonello da Messina e la pittura in Sicilia, 1914, pl. XVIII; Hadeln, Quattrocento, 1925, p. 17; J. Lauts, Vienna Jahrbuch, N.F., vii (1933), p. 79; B.M. Guide, 1895, no. 66.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Acquisition notes
- Inscribed by the Double-Numbering Collector: "Venti"
Popham & Pouncey 1950
Unknown Italian seventeenth-century collector who was in the habit of numbering his drawings, above in digits, below in words (the figures have in this case, presumably, been trimmed off)
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.789