- Museum number
- T,13.50
- Description
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Fragments of a study with putti and dogs; one dog curled up in the foreground wearing a spiked collar
Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1626-1650
- Dimensions
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Height: 162 millimetres
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Width: 270 millimetres (sheet extensively made up)
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Lit.: N. Turner, 'Italian Drawings in the BM, Roman Baroque Drawings', London, 1999, I, no. 308
Turner 1999
This is a study, in reverse and to the same scale, for the group of putti and hounds in the lower left of Testa's etching of 'Venus and Adonis' (Bartsch, 1803-21, xx, p. 222, no. 25; Bellini, 1976, p.46, no. 13; Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass., 1988-9, no. 16), which is generally dated in the middle of the 1630s. Testa's painted version of the subject, in reverse direction to the print (and therefore in the same direction as this drawing) and with many differences, is in the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (inv.no. 215; Cropper, 1984, pp. 35-7, 44-5, 60 and fig. 27; Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass., 1988-9, no. 15). The picture is thought to have preceded the etching.
The present drawing is a fragment cut from a much larger study, presumably for the whole composition. What is evidently another piece from this same sheet of paper, similarly cut into an irregular shape, is in the Uffizi, Florence (inv.no. 776 F; Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass., 1988-9, p. 35, no. 17) and is of the cupids among the tree-tops in the upper right of the print. A study for the sleeping dog in T,13.50, in the reverse direction to the British Museum drawing, is in the Uffizi, Florence, and is drawn in black chalk on light brown paper (inv.no. 12008 F; Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass., 1988-9, p. 34, where other related drawings for the composition are listed). An offset of a red chalk drawing for the putto seated on the right of the present drawing is preserved with the unmounted drawings placed under Testa's name (see Ff,4.71).
Once the composition of a given print had been settled upon, Testa's practice was sometimes to draw an open, mesh-like pattern over the whole design, usually in pen, but sometimes in red chalk: this divided the field into a series of irregularly shaped areas, the form of which was largely independent of the figurative composition. The purpose of this pattern remains obscure, but it probably had a bearing on the subsequent division of labour on the copper plate itself (though Cropper doubts this (1984, p. 34)). Testa sometimes then cut the paper along the interlocking contours, as in the present instance, breaking down the image into smaller components. Unfortunately, with the exception of the Uffizi drawing of 'Putti in Tree-tops', the companion segments of the original, dismembered compositional drawing have been lost.
A drawing in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen im Schlossmuseum, Weimar, for the etching of the 'Allegory of the Elevation of Marc Antonio Franciotti to the Rank of Bishop of Lucca', has been cut up in exactly this way and then reassembled (inv.no.KK 3069; Thiem, 1973, pp. 20-25; Cropper, 1984, p. 27 and fig. 7). A drawing for the etching the 'Garden of Venus' in the Uffizi, Florence (inv.no.1716 E; Cropper, 1984, p.34, fig.21; Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass., 1988-9, p. 25, fig. 13a), has been split up into segments in pen but the sheet has remained uncut, as has Pp,5.95, divided with red chalk.
The present drawing consists of two irregular sections, separated by a pen line drawn roughly at the centre. The section on the left comprises three hounds and two cupids and is marked by a cross at the centre right (apparently Testa's shorthand mark for an area of highlight in the corresponding print, even though in the drawing itself the area is lightly shaded); the section on the right includes three cupids and the backside of a hound, whose front end disappears down a burrow.
Literature: Parker, 1933, pp. 37-40, pl. 43; Marabottini, 1954, pp. 129-30, n. 16; Berlin, 1964, p. 26 under no. 19; Harris, 1967, pp. 38 and 52, n. 28; Hartmann, 1970, pp. 169-70; Bellini, 1976, p. 74, under no. 13; Philadelphia and Cambridge, Mass., 1988-9, under nos 16 and 17, pp. 30-36, fig. 16b.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1769
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- T,13.50
- Additional IDs
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Miscellaneous number: FAWK,5212.50