- Museum number
- T,14.38
- Description
-
Studies with a horse, after Tempesta
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, touches of red chalk
Verso: anatomical studies after Cigoli; studies of figures and horses
Red chalk (anatomical studies); pen and ink, graphite
- Production date
- 1616 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 234 millimetres
-
Width: 342 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- An early work. The horse in the centre of the recto is copied from a print by Tempesta (Bartsch 948).
One of the most prolific, innovative and accomplished graphic artists of the seventeenth century, Callot depicted a broad range of subjects, from the pomp of court pageants to the miseries of war. The naturalism and ease that characterize his manner can be traced to his studies during his formative years at the Medici court in Florence. The sketchbook of which this sheet was originally a part documented Callot's activity at that time and included studies of horses and figures drawn from prints, sculpture and the imagination in a range of scales and techniques. The overwhelming preoccupation of the sketchbook, however, was the study of equine anatomy based on a series of etchings by Antonio Tempesta, `Cavalli di differenti paesi`, published in Rome in 1690.
`A Standing Horse Facing Left`(fig.1), plate 8 in Tempesta's publication, was the model for the present sheet, as well as for other more or less finished studies in the British Museum, Uffizi (Florence), Nationalmuseum (Stockholm) and Kupferstichkabinett (Berlin).(n.1) Callot's horse is treated with a calligraphic bravura, imbuing the image with a vitality surpassing its print source. Small figures, quickly observed and broadly treated in wash, fill the rest of the sheet.
The verso is dominated by red chalk studies after Lodovico Cigoli's `Lo Scorticato`, or écorché, a bronze statuette of a standing man with exposed musculature (Bargello Museum, Florence).(n.2) The bronze was frequently drawn in early seventeenth-century Florence as part of an artist's training. In Callot's hands the figure takes on an elegant, elongated aspect. Small humorous figure sketches along the right margin have been linked to Callot's prints, `Guerre d'Amour`, `Balli` and `Gobbi`, supporting a date of c.1616 for the sketchbook.(n.3)
Of the twenty known, extant sheets from Callot's Florentine sketchbook,(n.4) Fawkener owned four, which formed part of his bequest to the British Museum in 1769.(n.5) D. Ternois has observed that five other sheets from the sketchbook share an eighteenth-century English provenance, having been owned by Nathaniel Hone (1718-84; Lugt 2793) and John Thane (1748-1818; Lugt 1544).(n.6) What has not been noted in the literature up to this point is that the Fawkener four and the Hone-Thane five share a common provenance before the mid-eighteenth century. The marks of two different unidentified collectors as well as a numbering system link all nine drawings. Ternois had conflated the 'J.B.' inscription and the unidentified stamp (Lugt 2736) as a single collector, whom he consistently placed chronologically after Thane in cataloguing the Hone-Thane drawings. The evidence of the same mark and inscriptions on the Fawkener drawings - not previously noted - disproves that assumption, as Hone and Fawkener were contemporaries, and the two unidentified collectors could therefore only have preceded them.(n.7) Presumably, the latter at least of the two unidentified collectors was in England in the mid-eighteenth century, selling four sheets to Fawkener and the rest to Hone.
Text by P. Stein, 2005 as cited below.
Fig.1 ANTONIO TEMPESTA, `A Standing horse before a Seascape`, no. 8 from `Cavalli di differenti paesi`, etching.
Notes
1 D. Ternois, `Jacques Callot, Catalogue complet de son oeuvre dessiné`, Paris, 1962, pp.47-8, nos 26, 29 and 38; for the Berlin drawing, ibid., `Jacques Callot, Catalogue de son oeuvre dessiné, Supplément` (1962-1998), Paris, 1999, p.21, no.1461.
2 Exhib.cat., Musée Historique Lorrain, Nancy, `Jacques Callot, 1592-1633`, 1992, no.40, pp.155-6.
3 Ibid., no.41, pp.156.
4 Ternois, 1962 (op.cit.), nos 25-36, pp.46-8 (nos 37-9 are also related to this group, pp.48-9), and Ternois, 1999 (op.cit.), nos S.1459-66,
pp.20-2; 54-61.
5 Ternois, 1962 (op.cit.), nos 25-8, p.47.
6 Ternois, 1999 (op.cit.), nos 1459-60; 1463; and 1465-6, pp.20-2, and A. L. Clark (ed.), exhib.cat., Cambridge, Toronto, Paris, Edinburgh, New York and Los Angeles, `Mastery and Elegance: Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz`, 1998-2000, no.7, pp.110-13. A number of these seem to have appeared on the art market in England in the 1950s and 1960s. The sheet catalogued in Ternois's Supplément as no.1463 has since been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as a partial and promised gift of Mr and Mrs David M. Tobey (2000.253a,b); see 'Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2000-2001', `The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin`, vol. LIX, no.2 (Fall 2001), p.28 (entry by P. Stein). Despite the presence of Hone's and Thane's collectors' marks, Ternois did not include them in the provenance of no.1463.
7. Lugt described mark 2736 as 'probably 17th-century', adding that eighteen sheets bearing this mark were left to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1765; see Lugt, 1956, p.513.
Lit.: H. Diane Russell, in exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 'Jacques Callot Prints & Related Drawings', 1975, no. 173, p. 217; H. Kurita and M. Koshikawa, in exhib. cat., Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, 'French drawings from the British Museum: from Fontainebleau to Versailles', 2002, no.25; P. Stein, in exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art and London, BM, 'French Drawings from Clouet to Seurat', 2005, no.14 (with previous literature); I. Seligman, 'Lines of Thought', London, 2016, no. 17, p. 54 (verso).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited
1975, Washington, NGA, Callot, no. 173
1984, BM, Master Drawings & Watercolours, no. 116
1992 Jun-Sept, Nancy, Musée Historique Lorrain, Callot, (ex cat.)
2002 April-June, Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural MA, French Drawings from the BM
2002 July-Sep, Tokyo, Nat Mus of Western Art, French Drawings from the BM
2005/6 Nov-Jan, New York, Met Mus of Art, Clouet to Seurat/BM
2006 June-Oct, BM, Clouet to Seurat/BM
2016 3 Sep - 6 Nov, Poole Museum, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 17 (verso)
2017 1 Jan - 25 Feb, The Brynmor Jones Library Art Gallery, University of Hull, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 17 (verso)
2017 12 Mar - 5 May, Ulster Museum, Belfast, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 17 (verso)
2017 May - Sep, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 17 (verso)
2017-2018 Oct - Jan, RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 'Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to now', no. 17 (verso)
- Acquisition date
- 1769
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- T,14.38
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: FAWK,5213.38
