drawing
- Museum number
- Pp,1.10
- Description
-
Four unrelated figures, including two studies of Evangelists and a figure in a helmet.
Pen and brown ink, on vellum.
Verso: Two eagles (treated heraldically).
Pen and brown ink, with brown wash, over black chalk.
- Production date
- 1410-1455
- Dimensions
-
Height: 221 millimetres
-
Width: 160 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Lit.: Degenhart-Schmitt, p.643. A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, 'Italian drawings in the BM, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', London, 1950, I, no. 222, II, pls. CLXXXVIII, CLXXXIX (with previous literature); J. Bean, ‘Bayonne, Musée Bonnat: les dessins italiens de la collection Bonnat’, Paris, 1960, under no. 223 (with a list of other ex-Lagoy drawings perhaps from the same album)
Popham & Pouncey 1950
As has already been remarked by those who have discussed this drawing, the figures on the recto are too weak to be by Pisanello himself. Hill is inclined to ascribe the central figure to the artist responsible for Codex Vallardi, fol. 173, no. 2633. The eagles on the verso, as Hill observes, repeat in reverse and on different scales those on Codex Vallardi, fol. 258, no. 2485 (repr. Hill, 'Dessins', pl. liv). The quality of the Louvre drawing, in which both eagles are crowned, is somewhat superior (e.g. in the drawing of the claws). Hill suggests that the crowned eagle may have been done for the Gonzaga arms, but admits that the Este eagle, which is sometimes represented crowned, is a possibility.
Literature: A. M. Hind, L'Arte, viii (1905), p. 211; G. F. Hill, Pisanello, pp. 238 f.; the same, Papers of the British School at Rome, iii (1905), p. 300; Von Manteuffel, op. cit., p. 170.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1824
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- Pp,1.10
