- Museum number
- 2004,0729.5
- Description
-
The Feast in the House of Simon, after Paolo Veronese; figures seated and standing at two tables, columns and receding architecture beyond, two putti bearing banner
Black and red chalk
Verso: study after part of the Tribuna of the Palazzo Grimani adorned with antique sculpture
Black and red chalk
- Production date
- 1582 (c.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 165 millimetres
-
Width: 280 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The drawing on the recto is a copy after Veronese's 'The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee' painted for the Venetian monastery of Santa Maria dei Servi between 1570 and 1573. It was later presented as a diplomatic gift to Louis XIV and is now in the Château de Versailles outside Paris.
Zuccaro made his first visit to Venice in October 1563, remaining there until July 1565 and working for the Grimani family in their palace and at the church of San Francesco della Vigna. He travelled to Venice again in 1582, painting a large canvas for the Sala del Gran Consiglio of the Palazzo Ducale, and again in the winter of 1603-04.
It was almost certainly on the second of his visits to Venice that Zuccaro copied Veronese's painting in Santa Maria dei Servi, which had been completed in 1573. Two surviving preparatory drawings by Zuccaro for a 'Last Supper' show Veronese's influence and were intended as studies for a painting for the Duomo in Urbino, a project commissioned in 1583 but never begun and eventually abandoned. Studies for this unexecuted project are in Stockholm (1863) and at Christ Church, Oxford (C. Acidini Luchinat, 'Taddeo e Federico Zuccari, fratelli pittori del cinquecento', Milan, 1998, II, figs. 39-40 on p. 142; the Oxford drawing she thinks might be a workshop piece p. 151, n. 131).
The sketch on the verso is related to the famous collection of antiquities, (sculptures, coins, gems and medals), owned by the Grimani family. The inscription refers to either Domenico Grimani, Cardinal Patriarch of Aquileia (1461-1523) or his nephew Giovanni Grimani (c.1500-1593), Patriach of Aquileia from 1545. He commissioned Zuccaro to complete the decoration of the family chapel in San Francesco della Vigna in 1563. By the time Zuccaro first visited Venice, the Grimani family owned one of the finest collections of Greek and Roman sculpture in the city, and displayed much of it in the family palace near Campo Santa Maria Formosa. Zuccaro worked on the fresco decoration of the interior of the Palazzo Grimani and made copies from an early sixteenth century manuscript known as the Grimani Breviary. The Grimani collection of antiquities was presented to the Venetian Republic on the death of Giovanni in 1593, and today forms the nucleus of the Museo Archeologico in Venice.
The sketch records part of the display of antiques sculptures or busts in the Tribuna of Palazzo Grimani, before they were removed from the family palace in 1593 or 1594. Professor Favoretto has kindly confirmed that it shows the wall opposite the entrance door: and that in the big niche there is a Satyr (now in the Statuario Publico, Venice); in the small niche on the second tier one of the Greek statuettes. In the niche at the lower tier, a Roman base (now in the Museo Archeologico, Venice) and above it perhaps a now lost bronze vase. For further information on matching Antique works in the Grimani collection to those in the drawing see the article of Favaretto and De Paoli and the reconstruction of the display in the Palazzo, see exhib. cat., D. Ferrara and T. Bergamo Rossi (eds), Venice, Palazzo Grimani, 'Domus Grimani 1594-2019, the collection of classical sculptures reassembled in its original setting after four centuries', 2019.
HC
Lit.: B. Py, 'Everhard Jabach: Supplement of Identifiable Drawings from the 1695 Estate Inventory', "Master Drawings", XLV, 1, 2007, no. 530 (old Jabach inv. number), p. 14; I. Favoretto and M. De Paoli, 'La Tribuna ritrovata. Uno schizzo inedito di Federico Zuccaro con l'"Antiquario dell'Ill. Patriarca Grimani"', "Eidola", 7, 2010, pp. 97-135
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 2004
- 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.
Exhibited as no.10 in Jean-Luc Baroni 'Master Drawings and Oil Sketches', 4-28 May 2004 New York and 1-23 July 2004, London. Provenance given as "Everhard Jabach, Paris; Acquired with a large part of the Jarbach collection by Pierre Crozat, Paris; His sale, Paris, 10 April-13 May 1741, probably part of lots 211 or 212 ('Desseins fait par Federic Zuccaro durant le cours de ses voyages, d'après les tableaux des plus grands Maîtres, qui avoient le plus piqué son goût'); Possibly Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon, Paris; Private collection, Novato, California".
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2004,0729.5
