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alb3664110 Design for the Tomb of Pope Julius II della Rovere. Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, Caprese 1475-1564 Rome). Dimensions: 20-1/16 x 12-9/16 in. (51 x 31.9 cm). Date: 1505-6.By 1505, eight years before his death, Pope Julius II della Rovere (reigned 1503-1513) had apparently already began contemplating plans to erect a grandiose tomb for himself in the new Saint Peter's Basilica being constructed according to Bramante's design, and entrusted Michelangelo with the sculptural project. In March-April 1505, Michelangelo probably began the first drawings for the tomb project which according to a first (lost) contract, was to cost 10,000 ducats, was to be finished in five years, and was to be sited in Saint Peter's at a location that was to be determined. Some of these intentions are already alluded to indirectly in Michelangelo's letter from Florence to his friend, the architect Giuliano da Sangallo in Rome, on May 2, 1506, for it was Giuliano who had encouraged the Pope in his choice of Michelangelo as the sculptor of the funerary program, amidst the heated artistic jealousies of the papal court. As described in Ascanio Condivi's biography of Michelangelo (Rome, 1553), the tomb of Julius II was to have been a three-story freestanding monument and may have included as many as forty-seven large figures carved of Carrara marble, but Michelangelo's project was interrupted by other papal commissions, chiefly the frescoes on the Sistine Ceiling (executed from 1508 to 1512), with which the early drawings for the Julius Tomb share considerable similarities of style. Following the pope's death on February 21, 1513, Michelangelo signed a second contract for a reduced version of the tomb to be finished in seven years. For a number of reasons, the Metropolitan Museum's drawing with its subtly pictorial illusionism of the architecture appears to reflect the first version of the Julius Tomb project, around 1505-6, as was convincingly argued by Michael Hirst in 1988, rather than that of the various designs produced after 1513, as has frequently been maintained in the literature. It is of much more subdued design and scale than the recto of the comparably large, nearly ruined drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett (inv. KdZ 15305), Berlin, which is the design most likely reflecting the contract of May 1513 for the Tomb of Pope Julius II. But the damaged autograph drawing by Michelangelo in Berlin is best understood through the faithful if awkward copy after it by Jacomo Rocchetti, preserved in the same collection (Kupferstichkabinett inv. KdZ 15306, Berlin; Fig. 1). To the present author's eye, the appearance of Rocchetti's design is that of a very clean copy-drawing, in which the underdrawing was the result of a "calco" method of transfer from Michelangelo's sheet (Kupferstichkabinett inv. KdZ 15305 recto); in a process much like a carbon-paper copy, the original by Michelangelo was placed on top of a sheet with a black-chalk-rubbed verso and another blank sheet underneath (Rocchetti's surface), and the outlines of the original were then incised with a stylus through the two layers of paper. Tellingly, the deriving copy is inscribed on the bottom of the sheet: "questo disegno é di Michelangelo buonarota hauuto da M[aestro] Iacomo rocchetti" (this design is by Michelangelo Buonarroti derived by Maestro Iacomo Rocchetti). The Berlin design by Michelangelo (as understood from Rocchetti's clean copy) is also more subdued in design than what is seen of the lower part of the monument in the drawing at the Uffizi (inv. 608 E recto), Florence, once owned by Pierre-Jean Mariette and which is perhaps a somewhat earlier version of the design than the Berlin drawings while being from the same 1513 campaign.The diagrammatic clarity of form and precise construction of architectural elements in the large Metropolitan Museum sheet are typical of modelli (demonstration drawings), produced for presentation of the design to a patron or to be used for the execution of the design by members of the workshop. As may be deduced from the Metropolitan drawing, the massive tomb ensemble was to be a three-sided structure attached to a wall, and in a daring departure from tradition, Michelangelo designed the pope's effigy to be seen frontally, and within the tall arched niche, angels raise the dead pope toward the Virgin and Child. A quick outline sketch in pen and brown ink for the Pope's raised effigy, seen in a side view facing left (Casa Buonarroti inv. 43A verso, Florence; Fig. 3), best allows one to envision the design of this main figure in elevation, as it were, in the 1505-6 monument. The upper part of the wall tomb with its monumental niche, or cappelletta, as it is called in the Julius Tomb documents, is of approximately the same design, though squatter than in the Berlin drawings and the architectural detailing is in a style closer to that of the Quattrocento. Also similar to the solution evident in the Berlin drawings are the motifs of the Virgin and Child in the mandorla (anticipating the design of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, of 1513), with the dead pope in frontal view being supported over the sarcophagus by angels. But eliminated from the Berlin drawings are the figures of the youths with hirsute hair and somewhat whimsical expression who flank and face the niche in the Metropolitan sheet -- that on the left with an aspergillum and bucket of holy water, that on the right with a censer; in the Berlin sheets, these flanking figures are idealized and more schematic, while looking outward. The lower part of the Metropolitan drawing, however, most radically differs from the designs in the Uffizi and Berlin sheets. It omits the classicizing figures of the slaves and herm pilasters seen in the latter, and the nearly square relief at center offers an inventive portrayal of the Gathering of Manna (Exodus 16:11 - 36; Numbers 11:7 - 9), with acorns falling from an oak tree, in allusion to the heraldic device of the Della Rovere family (in Italian, "rovere" means oak). The Della Rovere acorns abound elsewhere in the design, filling a footed cup between two reclining river gods at lower center, and they decorate the finials of the thrones of the sibyl and prophet on the second storey of the monument. Allegorial figures of Charity and Faith stand within the niches to the left and right on the lower storey. The projection of the tomb from the wall is indicated by statues of standing figures seen in profile at extreme left and right, and the ensemble portrayed in the Metropolitan Museum drawing would have rested on a stepped base, as is seen in the Uffizi and Berlin designs, but which in this case is cropped by the lower border of the sheet.The early date of the Metropolitan sheet in 1505-6 is confirmed by the style of the figures, similar to those in the small pen-and-ink jottings on the sheet connected with the Battle of Cascina (Uffizi inv. 233 F, Florence); as well as further by the discovery in 1990, of the fragmentary designs for the Julius Tomb, on the versos of two corresponding portions of the same sheet now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and of which the recto of one sheet depicts a nude seen from the back for the Battle of Cascina, began in 1504. "The tragedy of the tomb," as Condivi called Michelangelo's forty-year ordeal in producing the Tomb of Julius II, did not end until 1545, when the present, much scaled-down structure was installed in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, far away from the papal majesty of Saint Peter's Basilica (Fig. 2); the most in-depth study of the related drawings for the Julius monument is by Claudia Echinger Maurach. The gradual reinstatement of the large, carefully rendered Metropolitan Museum drawing in the Michelangelo literature is due to Michael Hirst in 1976, who published the first detailed analysis of it, also advocating for the authorship of Michelangelo himself; the Metropolitan Museum of Art had acquired the drawing fourteen years earlier, as a work by the school of Michelangelo. While the attribution to Michelangelo has met mostly with approval since 1976, it was not endorsed by Charles de Tolnay in his Corpus (1975-80), who considered it a copy, with a style of outline-drawing too calligraphic, too soft, and less dynamic than Michelangelo's autograph studies, and the drawing was also more recently rejected by Frank Zöllner, Christof Thoenes, and Thomas Pöpper in 2008, without offering any reasoning. Hirst's opinion in 1976 was that the Metropolitan sheet dated more or less to the time of the Berlin design (Kupferstichkabinett inv. KdZ 15305), but in a revised opinion in 1988, proposed instead the Metropolitan drawing as Michelangelo's original project of 1505 for the Julius Tomb. Michelangelo's designs for the Tomb of Julius II offered meaningful visual sources (perhaps even normative ones) for artists of the following generation, as is seen, for example, in the design produced by Antonio da Sangallo "The Younger" for the Tomb of Pope Clement VII. Both drawings served as modelli, or demonstration drawings, perhaps for the patron, being precisely executed over a comprehensive construction with the stylus, compass, and ruler. While Michelangelo's working drawing is in good overall condition, the design has been roughly silhouetted and mounted onto a larger sheet, and the drawing surface seems sufficiently abraded for the underdrawing to have disappeared in several passages; the sheet also exhibits minor accretions, a horizontal crease at center, and some brown stains.Carmen C. Bambach (2009, revised in 2014). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3602771 Aubrey Beardsley. Artist: Frederick H. Evans (British, London 1853-1943 London). Dimensions: 13.6 x 9.7 cm (5 3/8 x 3 13/16 in.); 12.3 x 9.5 cm (4 13/16 x 3 3/4 in.). Date: ca. 1894.A major figure in British Pictorialism and a driving force of its influential society The Linked Ring, Frederick Evans is best known for his moving interpretations of medieval cathedrals rendered with unmatched subtlety in platinum prints. Until 1898, Evans owned a bookshop in London where, according to George Bernard Shaw, he was the ideal bookseller, chatting his customers into buying what he thought was right for them. In 1889, Evans befriended the seventeen-year-old Aubrey Beardsley, a clerk in an insurance company who, too poor to make purchases, browsed in the bookshop during lunch hours. Eventually, Evans recommended Beardsley to the publisher John M. Dent as the illustrator for a new edition of Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur." It was to be Beardsley's first commission and the beginning of his meteoric rise to fame.Evans probably made these two portraits of Beardsley (1872-1898) in 1894, at the time the young artist was achieving notoriety for his scandalous illustrations of Oscar Wilde's "Salomé" and "The Yellow Book," two publications that captured the irreverent, decadent mood of the European fin de siècle. A lanky, stooped youth who suffered from tuberculosis and would die of the disease at the age of twenty-five, Beardsley, conscious of his awkward physique, cultivated the image of the dandy. Evans is reported to have spent hours studying Beardsley, wondering how best to approach his subject, when the artist, growing tired, finally relaxed into more natural poses. In the platinum print on the left, Evans captured the inward-looking artist lost in the contemplation of his imaginary world, his beaked profile cupped in the long fingers of his sensitive hands. In contrast, in the photogravure on the right, Beardsley peers out from under his smoothly combed fringe as if scrutinizing himself in an unseen mirror. Evans presented the portraits mounted as a diptych in a folder. Produced in an edition of twenty, the sets were probably issued as a commemorative tribute following the artist's death on March 16, 1898. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. Author: FREDERICK H. EVANS.

alb3650516 Landscape with Apollo and the Muses. Artist: Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) (French, Chamagne 1604/5?-1682 Rome). Dimensions: 9 3/8 x 12 5/8 in. (23.8 x 32.1 cm). Date: 1674.This work belongs to a group of five drawings dated 1674 that bear witness to Claude's ongoing interest in the theme of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus. This subject was very popular in 17th-century Rome: it was featured in one of the celebrated murals that Raphael had painted in the Vatican, and it served to glorify the patron concerned as a protector of the arts. One of Claude's most ambitious paintings had been Landscape with Parnassus (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), commissioned in 1652 by cardinal Camillo Astalli-Pamphilj, the nephew of the then-reigning pope, Innocent X. Twenty-two years later the artist made a series of works exploring the subject anew, including the Metropolitan Museum's drawing. This is the largest of the set; it also stands out for the use of tinted paper and the presence of a massive slanted tree. Unlike the other drawings of the series, the emphasis here is not on a play between a mountain in the foreground on one side and a distant plain on the other, but between the figures huddled on the left and the tree leaning towards the right, which are all set in the same plane, a different way of attaining equilibrium through the counterbalancing of opposites. The result is a frieze-like arrangement, where the eye is offered an outlet into depth only along the right margin. This is where a group of poets heading for Mount Parnassus can barely be made out. The winged horse on the slope of the mountain just above Apollo and the Muses is Pegasus, who has struck the ground and is making the Hippocrene fountain spring, a source of poetic inspiration. Its water reappears at the feet of Apollo and cascades towards the foreground pool, where two swans, birds sacred to Apollo, are floating. A few of the Muses can be identified by virtue of their attributes: the one elegantly striding on the extreme left is Terpsichore, the Muse of dance; the one seated in front of her and holding a trumpet is Clio, the Muse of historical writing (the trumpet refers to the glory that history bestows on its protagonists); the one seated on the right with a book is Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry; the one standing next to her with a theatrical mask is Talia, the Muse of comedy. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3662424 Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral. Artist: Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) (French, Chamagne 1604/5?-1682 Rome). Dimensions: 9 3/4 x 15 1/16 in. (24.7 x 38.2 cm). Date: 1674.This highly pictorial drawing, along with a sketchier one depicting the same scene (Lehman Collection, 1975.1.661), are part of a group associated with one of Claude's most celebrated paintings from the last phase of his long artistic career (Holkham Hall, Norfolk, England). The painting, which bears the same title and date as the drawing, was executed in 1674 for Camillo Massimi (1620-1676), who became a major patron of the arts after being elevated to the position of Cardinal by pope Clement X in 1670. The subject, going back to the Latin poet Ovid, was not common among artists, but cardinal Massimi's collection of drawings featured a sheet of the same subject by Claude's fellow countryman Nicolas Poussin (Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, England) which included all the characters found in Claude's work. Taking into account the annotation on the Lehman sheet specifying that the "idea" came from the prelate, it seems likely that Massimi commissioned from Claude a recreation of Poussin's theme. Perseus, the mythological hero, had decapitated Medusa, whose gaze petrified anybody looking at her, and used her severed head as a magic weapon to rescue princess Andromeda from a sea-monster. Immediately after this deed Perseus stopped on an island with his winged horse Pegasus to wash the monster's blood off his hands. He laid Medusa's head on seaweed: the blood still dripping from it transformed the twigs into coral, to the wonder of a group of sea-nymphs. The setting is one of Claude's highly evocative landscapes. The artist made full use of the tonal and chromatic possibilities of brown, gray and blue washes combined with white gouache to imbue his scene with an early morning atmosphere. He anchored his composition by means of a group of trees on the left and a rock formation in the shape of an arch on the right, with the foliage of the bigger tree echoing the bend of the rocks. He set them against the light, whose source is visible in the disk of the sun hovering in the sky and its reflection on the sea, rendered through an extensive use of white heightening. As a result, the celestial expanse and the water surface shimmer with light amidst subtle modulations of color: from greyish blue to yellow and a streak of white above the horizon in the sky; from yellowish blue to pale and dark blue in the sea. The effect is enhanced by white gouache highlights on the figures, which acquire a sculptural quality despite their small size. While the Lehman drawing is undoubtedly a compositional study, this work may have been a presentation piece, made to obtain the approval of the patron. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3673509 Mirror-Bearer. Culture: Maya. Dimensions: H. 14 1/8 x W. 9 x D. 9 in. (35.9 x 22.9 x 22.9 cm). Date: 6th century.This Mirror-Bearer figure is the best-preserved example of portable Maya wood sculpture and one of the highlights of the Early Classic period (ca. A.D. 250-550) Maya art. The artist created this figure out of a solid piece of hardwood from the genus Cordia, known locally as bocote. Research determined a radiocarbon age for the wood of 1425 years before present (± 120 years), or a range of A.D. 410 to 650. It was said to have come from the border region between Guatemala and Tabasco, Mexico. Most likely, to judge from its extraordinary preservation, the findspot must have been a dry cave or well-sealed funerary chamber. The damage on its left side is the result of some wear or decay in that context, perhaps from resting against a surface or being subjected to varying passage of air. The person, a male, wears an elaborate knee-length woven skirt with ties that cover his navel. The waistband of the skirt shows a braided and fringed design with circular rosettes on the hips and at the spine. The hem of the skirt displays a jagged starburst-like pattern bordered above by a twisted braid and below by flaring fringe. The square knot at the figure's stomach accentuates the realistic portrayal of the garment that sags between its slightly splayed knees. In addition, the Mirror-Bearer dons a shawl that goes around his neck and falls through his arms to connect to the rear rosette and is gathered in a bunch that sags away from the figure's back. Clearly defined notches in the skirt and under the arms would have held a removable plaque approximately 5 inches square, probably covered in a mosaic mirror of pyrite or obsidian. The plaque would have been inserted under the arms and then hooked into the skirt notches. In fact, the artist thinned the shawl under the figure's right arm by chiseling. This enabled a better "fit" for the plaque, which, at a roughly 60-degree angle, matched the pitch of the figure's face. The Mirror-Bearer wears a distinct hairstyle or headdress and is shown with a curled moustache. The eye sockets are carved out, possibly to hold eye inlays of shell and obsidian. He arches his back, his head slightly tilted upward, his upper arms parallel to the ground, and his feet, which, though eroded, are folded under his body. He is shown holding his fists tightly to his chest, clutched under an elaborate pectoral. The pectoral ornament depicts an anthropomorphic portrait, with a headdress, ear flares, and a wide collar of jade beads. The elaborate multi-tiered ear ornaments of the figure consist of a flare through the stretched lobe, with two other jade discs hanging below it, terminating in a graceful portrait of a jawless reptilian creature. Such luxurious jade jewelry would have only been reserved for a high member of the elite. Surviving reddish iron oxide pigment on the surface indicates that he would have been brightly painted and vivid in effect. Although the artist seems to have depicted this individual at a small scale but with normal bodily proportions at approximately 1/3 scale, he is most likely a royal court dwarf, as seen in many palace scenes. The unusual facial hair, bulbous forehead, and profile are consistent with Maya artists' depictions of individuals with achondroplasia or other types of genetic dwarfism. In Maya art, dwarves represented a type of antithetical beauty in contrast to the graceful Maize God. They were also very special in the eyes of Mesoamerican societies; they had divinatory powers and were sought after as entertainers in royal courts.The mirror-bearer to the ruler was an important role, sometimes filled by a woman, but more often by courtly dwarves. Their primary function was to reflect the image of Maya lords and ladies as those dignitaries preened in self-regard. Many of these mirror plaques have been found in Mexico and Central America, especially from the Classic Maya and Teotihuacan cultures. They are usually rectangular or circular ranging from 7 to 30 cm. in diameter. Mirrors are also known as objects for divination in Mesoamerica. The mirrors themselves were planes of luminous reflection, conceived as portals. The semi-permanence of a mirror held by a stone or wooden character implies that a mirror needed to be aimed at the ruler at all times when he was on the throne.There may be a connection with the wooden Mirror-Bearer and K'awiil, the Maya god of lightning, who is closely associated with mirrors or highly polished stones in artistic representations. When excavators at Tikal, Guatemala encountered a tomb they labeled Burial 195, it was flooded with sediment, allowing them to detect voids in the mud. When injected with plaster, the voids revealed small wooden deity figures covered in blue-green stucco from which the wood had rotted away. These wooden K'awiils are seen as holding a square elements in front of them, much like the Mirror-Bearer. Only two other wooden mirror-bearers are known. The first, in the Princeton University Art Museum (y1990-71), is of similar scale to the Met's figure. The bearer is shown with standard bodily proportions but bears traces of an abnormal hairstyle and raised bump representations of scarification on the chin. Probably a youthful courtier, for young men also did much service to kings, he is adorned with a plain loincloth tied in the back and also exhibits vestiges of red pigment and stucco on the weathered surface. The only archaeologically excavated example of a wooden mirror-bearer comes from the site of Becan, Campeche, Mexico. It was recovered from a disturbed funerary chamber within the elevated tiers of Structure IX, the largest pyramid at the site. Along with the wooden sculpture, excavators found a conch shell (Strombus sp.), a frame with mosaic tesserae of hematite, three obsidian blades and fifteen Early Classic ceramic vessels. The wood was also identified as of the genus Cordia, perhaps chosen for its sturdiness but light weight relative to denser woods. Carved from one piece, the bearer is a standing male dwarf, leaning forward with his chin slightly raised and his arms held bent at the side of his body, which was originally covered in red pigment. There is other evidence that the Mirror-Bearer of the Metropolitan Museum would have been placed in the center of scenes of feasting, tribute, or other rituals. A wooden mirror-bearer may appear on a cylinder vessel in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (NGA 82.2292), originally made in the mid-8th century at the Ik' kingdom of the area of Lake Petén Itza, Petén, Guatemala. The central figure is a portly king surrounded by his attendants, musicians, and even a hunchback and a dwarf drinking out of a large bowl. The key figure of this composition is the small dwarf holding the mirror: this is possibly an object of wood. It has a markedly differential color and scale that contrast with that of the nearby drinking dwarf, and resemble more closely that of the wooden mirror bearers from the Metropolitan. Though painted roughly two centuries after the creation of the Metropolitan's Mirror-Bearer, this object appears in the company of other courtiers. Thus there was continuity through generations of portraying a wooden object in a group of humans as an equal participant in courtly life, gesturing and interacting with the king. James Doyle, 2016. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.