- Museum number
- 1960,0527.1
- Description
-
A standing woman, seen from behind; a child or putto at her left shoulder, lozenge-shaped
Pen and brown ink, with brown wash, over black chalk, with lines indented
- Production date
- 1550-1560 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 266 millimetres
-
Width: 149 millimetres (sheet made up)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Lit: J.A. Gere and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, Artists working in Rome', London, 1983, no. 272; B. Py, 'Everhard Jabach Collectionneur (1618-1695), Les Dessins de Inventaire de 1695', Paris, 2001, Appendix B, p. 314
Gere & Pouncey 1983
The style of the drawing and the conception of the figure, reflecting as they respectively do the influence of Perino del Vaga and Daniele da Volterra, suggest a dating not later than the 1550s. Two similarly posed figures occur in Tibaldi's frescoes in the Palazzo Poggi in Bologna: that of Nausicaa in the composition of 'Ulysses and Antinous' in the Sala dell'Adunanze (or smaller Sala dell'Odissea) on the ground floor (Brigand, fig. 127), and a Caryatid in the frieze of the room on the first floor immediately to the l. of the head of the stairs (Brigand, fig. 131). Tibaldi worked in this palace in the period following his return to Bologna from Rome in 1553/4.
The pose of the figure is inspired by one of Daniele da Volterra's Caryatids in the 'basamenti' of the side walls of the Orsini Chapel in SS. Trinità dei Monti. These figures no longer exist, but there is a copy of this particular one in the Ashmolean Museum (Parker, no. 209, repr. pl. L) and in Jan de Bisschop's 'Paradigmata Graphices', and one of the whole 'basamento' in the Uffìzi (1788°; Gernsheim 23563 and Briganti, fig. 173). It is significant that Brigand should have mistakenly described this last drawing as a study by Tibaldi for the first-floor frieze in the Palazzo Poggi mentioned above. Daniele's decoration of the Orsini Chapel probably dates from the mid-1540s, not long before his decoration of the Della Rovere Chapel in the same church, where Tibaldi worked as his assistant soon after arriving in Rome in 1547.
The figure in 1960,0527.1 was not designed to be a Caryatid, but as part of a composition: the head of a child, apparently carried on her arm, appears in the top l. corner, and to the r., behind the outstretched arm, can be seen the r. forearm and part of the body of a standing man.
Literature: J.A. Gere, BMQ, xxvi (1962-3), pp. 41ff.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1981-2, Rome, Castel Sant'Angelo, Gli affreschi di Paolo III, no.148
- Acquisition date
- 1960
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1960,0527.1
