- Museum number
- 1900,0515.3
- Description
-
Abundance; a woman standing to left with a basket of fruit on her shoulder and a cornucopia before her
Pen and brown ink, with brown wash, heightened with white, over black chalk, on blue paper
- Production date
- 1544
- Dimensions
-
Height: 388 millimetres
-
Width: 185 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Acquired as by Battista Zelotti, in 1940 the drawing was transferred to Vasari by Philip Pouncey, who identified it as a study for the figure of 'Abundance' from the allegorical vault of the refectory of Sant'Anna dei Lombardi (formerly Santa Maria di Monteoliveto), Naples. Several other figure studies for this cycle survive, many of them stylistically very similar, for example the study of Prudence in the Fondation Custodia, Paris (for all the other studies, see Härb nos. 116-9, and 121-2). Pierluigi Leone de Castris has attributed the execution of the resulting fresco to Raffaellino del Colle, one of several assistants Vasari had called south during his Neapolitan sojourn.
Lit: H. Macandrew, 'Italian Drawings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston', Boston, 1983, under no. 121, p. 89; N. Turner, exhib. cat., BM, 'Florentine Drawings of the sixteenth century', 1986, no. 135 (with previous literature); F. Härb, ‘The Drawings of Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)’, Rome, 2015, p. 268, no. 120.
Turner, Florentine Drawings of the Sixteenth Century, London, 1986
A study for the figure of 'Abundance', one of a series of Virtues that form part of the decoration of the refectory of the Convent of Monte Oliveto, Naples, which Vasari was commissioned to paint in November 1544 during a short visit to the city. The pose was used again for a figure of Charity in the fresco decoration of the gran salone of the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome, painted two years later.
An inferior copy is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see H. Macandrew, 'Italian Drawings in the Museum of Pine Arts, Boston', 1983, no. 121).
Literature: Barocchi (1964), p. 129.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1980, Adelaide and Melbourne, No. 66
1986, BM, Florentine Drawings 16thC, no. 135
1992 Oct-Dec, Norwich, UEA, 'Florentine Drawings' (no cat.)
2011 Aug-Dec, Arezzo, Galleria Communale, Giorgio Vasari
- Acquisition date
- 1900
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1900,0515.3