- Museum number
- 1946,0713.210
- Description
-
Leda and the Swan; in a landscape Leda is lying naked on her back, the swan on top of her kissing her lips
Pen and brown ink, over black chalk
- Production date
- 1500-1505 (fl.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 121 millimetres
-
Width: 155 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Popham in the Fenwick catalogue entry suggested that the 'drawing might well be that of an engraver like Nicoletto Rosex da Modena'. At an unspecified date after 1946 as it is listed as 'North Italian' in the register of the 1946,0713 gift, Popham decided this was by Jacopo Ripanda (note in red pencil in Fenwick catalogue). Raimondi's name was first suggested by Konrad Oberhuber who compared the present study to 'Romulus and Remus suckling' in the Uffizi, Florence (1673 F; Bologna exhib., no. 45) and works in Frankfurt, Bayonne and the Morgan Library, New York. Raimondi's composition may have been influenced by a niello print of 'Leda and the Swan' by Nicoletto da Modena (Hind, V, no. 77), a variant of which is in the BM (A.M. Hind, 'Nielli, Chiefly Italian of the XV century', London, 1936, no. 275). These depend loosely on a relief on a Roman sarcophagus, now lost, which in the Renaissance was on the Quirinal (see Bober and Rubinstein, no. 5). On stylistic grounds the drawing can be dated to the beginning of the artist's career 1500-5.
Lit.: A.E. Popham, 'Catalogue of Drawings in the Collection formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart., F.R.S., now in the possession of his Grandson, T. Fitzroy Phillipps Fenwick of Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham', I, London, 1935, p. 3, no. 4 (as North Italian School, XVth century); A.M. Hind, 'Early Italian Engravings', London, 1948, under no. 77 (as possibly by Nicoletto da Modena); P. Pouncey, review of Hind, 1948, 'The Burlington Magazine', XCI, 1949, p. 236 (stating that Popham had suggested by Ripanda); M.J. Zucker, 'The Illustrated Bartsch 25 (Commentary)', New York, 1984, no. .074, p. 222; P.P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, 'Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture', Oxford, 1986, under no. 5, pp. 53-4, fig. 5a; M. Faietti and K. Oberhuber (eds.), exhib. cat., Bologna, 'Bologna e L'Umanesimo', 1988, no. 44, pp. 185-6; G. Agosti, in exhib. cat., Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 'Disegni del Rinascimento in Valpadana', 2001, under no. 98, p. 422
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1988 Mar-Apr, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna e L'Umanesimo, no.44
1988 May-Jun, Vienna, Albertina, 'Humanismus in Bologna', no. 44
- Acquisition date
- 1946
- Acquisition notes
- According to Register lot 146 in Robinson sale.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1946,0713.210
