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alb3681836 Sketches of Figures of the Virgin Kneeling, Saint Peter Standing, Seated Allegorical Figures of Faith and Charity, and Child Standing on a Corbel (?) (recto); Sketches of Figures of Saint Sebastian Standing and the Virgin and Child with Angels (verso). Artist: Attributed to Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (Italian, Fiesole 1437-1493 Florence). Dimensions: 10 13/16 x 7 13/16in. (27.4 x 19.8cm). Date: 1487-88.To judge from the drawing style and subject matter, Ferrucci was strongly influenced by the Florentine sculptor Andrea Verrocchio (1435-1488). Although he was trained by his father, Ferrucci may have been Verrocchio's assistant in the 1470s; Verrocchio's workshop offered a training ground for many of the brilliant draftsmen of late-fifteenth-century Florence. This drawing once formed part of the sketchbook formerly attributed to Verrocchio himself: the great nineteenth-century art historian and connoisseur Giovanni Morelli was the first to propose the name of Francesco di Simone, and this attribution has been generally accepted by later scholars.This boldly drawn double-sided sheet is part of a well-known dismembered Florentine sketchbook (now dispersed in a variety of collections) that apparently records sculptural models, most of which can be associated with the style of Andrea del Verrocchio's workshop. It also includes, however, motifs inspired by the work of such other Florentine sculptors as Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Benedetto da Maiano, Desiderio da Settignano, Luca della Robbia, and Bernardo Rossellino. This and nineteen other pages of the sketchbook are currently known, all of a similar size and drawing technique on rose-washed paper, and at least nine of these bear the same watermark (a Gothic M). The codicological evidence has been examined with particular attention by Albert J. Elen. Like catalogue number 8, most of the sheets are also drawn on both sides and bear inscriptions of many types, from dates to debit accounts to the names of individuals. The following collections own pages of this sketchbook: the Musée Condé, Chantilly (eight); Musée du Louvre, Paris (three); École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (two); British Museum, London (two); Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (one); Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon (one); Hamburger Kunsthalle (one). An additional sheet was last recorded in a private collection in 1983.1 Two of the Chantilly sheets (21[15]; 22[16]) bear the date 1487, while one of the sheets in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (374 v), bears the date 1488.To judge from the very eclectic choices of sculptural motifs and styles, the sketchbook may have served as a visual record or sourcebook for the use of a modestly talented sculptor, or even a sculptor's apprentice. (Similar motifs are sometimes naively repeated in page after page of the sketchbook.) About 1850, when the sketchbook seems to have gotten noticed by scholars, it was ascribed to Andrea del Verrocchio himself, since his name is inscribed on one of the sheets used for the purpose of settling an account, and thus it became nicknamed the Verrocchio Sketchbook. In 1893, Giovanni Morelli (Ivan Lermolieff) attributed the sketchbook to the sculptor Francesco di Simone Ferrucci da Fiesole (Francesco di Simone Fiorentino), who was said by Giorgio Vasari to have been Verrocchio's pupil but who was in actuality Verrocchio's near contemporary.2 From the little that is known about Francesco di Simone (he is not documented until 1463), he was likely a collaborator in the Verrocchio workshop. Scholars have usually accepted Morelli's attribution, though often with reservations (Georg Gronau expressing the most doubt in 1896), for the inscriptions on the pages seem to be by another hand than that of the artist of the sketches, and the names "Lorenzo" and "Gabrielo" also turn up.That the draftsman of the sketchbook is probably not the author of the actual motifs can be surmised from the fact that the main motif of the kneeling Virgin seen here in the center of the recto seems to be copied repeatedly on the other sheets, recording the incomplete state of the original work that served as a model. One such kneeling Virgin appears in a sheet at Chantilly (Musée Condé, 23[17] verso), while at least two further variants in drawings that were not part of the so-called Verrocchio Sketchbook are at the Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo, and the British Museum, London (1963-11-9-23). On the one hand, the drawings are close in style to a design in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, that may well be Francesco di Simone's original study for the tomb of the jurist Alessandro Tartagni (San Domenico, Bologna), from about 1477 to 1480 and mentioned by Vasari. On the other hand, some of the annotations on the sheets conflict with the thesis of Francesco's authorship. (Carmen C. Bambach, 2003). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3659959 Saint Jerome in the Wilderness. Artist: Probably by Antonio Rossellino (Italian, Settignano 1427-ca. 1479 Florence). Culture: Italian, Florence. Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): 16 5/8 × 15 1/4 × 2 7/8 in., 31 lb. (42.2 × 38.7 × 7.3 cm, 14.0615kg). Date: ca. 1470.The Metropolitan displays in its galleries an important group of quattrocento reliefs of the Madonna and Child by such Italian Renaissance masters as Antonio Rossellino (see acc. no. 14.40.675) and Benedetto da Maiano (see acc. no. 41.190.137). Until Saint Jerome in the Wilderness entered the collection, however, the Museum had no example of a classic narrative relief. Beginning in 1424, when Lorenzo Ghiberti's first set of bronze doors for the Baptistery was set in place, narrative reliefs held signal importance in Florentine art. (It was Ghiberti who invented the device, echoed here, of showing the foreground spilling over the frame in the reliefs for his second set of Baptistery doors, the "Gates of Paradise.")[1] Small reliefs like this marble were often made for private devotions in a family chapel. The 1553 inventory of the Palazzo della Signoria, Florence, for example, mentions a low relief of Saint Jerome,[2] which could have been this one, although it is usually associated with a work by Desiderio da Settignano in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[3] The subject is unsurprising: images of this gaunt ascetic abounded in the 1470s, as is attested by paintings attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio (Palazzo Pitti, Florence) and by Leonardo da Vinci (Pinacoteca, Vatican).Widely read during the Renaissance, Jerome's letters vividly describe his physical and spiritual trials in the desert outside Bethlehem, where, he tells us, he would "set up my oratory, and make that spot a place of torture for my unhappy flesh."[ 4] Furthermore, the best-selling compilation of saints' lives, Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend, relates charming stories of his relationships with animals, which are often woven into depictions of the present scene. We learn that he befriended a lion; the lion teamed up with a donkey to carry wood to Jerome's monastery; and some camel-driving merchants stole the donkey. These tales account for the lion, lioness, and camel in the relief. It is, in fact, a virtual bestiary: the stag, for instance, may be explained by the following passage from the Song of Solomon, "Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart," which is often interpreted in Renaissance exegesis as a reference to Christ, whose cross rises above the animal here. Other creatures -- a squirrel and a dragon -- also carried symbolic meaning in contemporary writings.[5]The references to religious and secular literature made this a stirring image in fifteenth-century Florence, yet it is the airy landscape that draws the viewer into the scene and encourages him or her to linger over its delightful details. Jerome and the animals inhabit a mountainous region that conjures atmosphere and depth within the compact limits of the relief. Twin peaks curve toward the saint as if sheltering him within the hollow at their base. As Jerome kneels on the rocky stage in the foreground, the lions stand or sit on ledges receding to the left; in the distance a trader and his camel disappear behind a crag. Jutting from an outcrop, the crucifix separates Jerome from the right side of the pictorial space, where beasts and foliage hint at a passage behind the peaks. Using a mountainous landscape to separate a composition into discrete areas was pioneered by Ghiberti in the Baptistery reliefs and by such artists as Domenico Veneziano in painting. Borrowing that formal device, the sculptor of this relief carved the marble intuitively, suggesting recession into depth rather than constructing it through the rules of one-point perspective. Careful observations of striated rock, different varieties of leaves, and wispy clouds breathe life into this natural world.The style of the work closely resembles that of a set of reliefs in Faenza Cathedral. Giorgio Vasari credited them to Benedetto da Maiano, but many later scholars have attributed them to Benedetto's master, Antonio Rossellino. [6] In 1985, however, Gary M. Radke returned the attribution to Benedetto, finding that they forecast another, slightly later set of reliefs by him in the chapel of Santa Fina, San Gimignano.7 Radke pointed out that in the Faenza reliefs the manner in which the foreground figure is related to the mountains, the use of foliage to fill out the middle ground, and the placement of animals in the background are all aspects of Benedetto's sensibility as well as Rossellino's. Even Mario Scalini, a scholar who attributes the Museum's relief to Rossellino, dates it to the 1470s by relating it to Benedetto's Stigmatization of Saint Francis in the church of Santa Croce, Florence.[8] And because it is clearly dependent on Rossellino's sculptural formulas, our relief was not surprisingly identified as his work when it was auctioned in New York in 1918.[9] Radke's arguments for Benedetto's authorship of the Faenza reliefs -- citing Benedetto's keen interest in narrative and his blocky figures and rich surface ornamentation -- are attractive, but the eminent scholar Francesco Caglioti continues to believe that Rossellino and his workshop were responsible.[10] Clearly, whoever carved the Faenza reliefs also carved the Museum's Saint Jerome in the Wilderness.Although we have no written record of its authorship, this relief's renown in the Renaissance is confirmed by the existence of two copies. A glazed terracotta of about 1510 attributed to Luca della Robbia the Younger (1475 - 1548) in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence, is clearly based on the composition, which the artist clarified through color, thereby losing atmospheric perspective.[11] There are a few changes in the details, but the basic form and the dimensions are the same. In another version (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), also attributed to Luca della Robbia the Younger, a bearded Jerome has been turned into a contemplative saint reading a book, not mortifying himself with a rock.[12] Rather, his arms are spread wide in adoration of Christ. This different interpretation may have been more appealing in a less fervently religious period than the 1470s, but the survival of the composition speaks for the fame of the relief long after its original conception.[Ian Wardropper. European Sculpture, 1400-1900, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, no. 5, pp. 23-25.]Footnotes:[1] See Andrew Butterfield. "Art and Innovation in Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise." In The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece, pp. 16-41. Exh. cat. edited by Gary M. Radke, with Contributions by Andrew Butterfield et al. High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Art Institute of Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; 2007-8. Atlanta and New Haven, 2007, pp. 23 - 26.[2] "quadro marmoreo in rilievo schiacciato che rappresenta S. Girolamo"; quoted in Ida Cardellini. Desiderio da Settignano. Studi e documenti di storia dell'arte 3. Milan, 1962, p. 244.[3] Rudolph Wittkower. "Desiderio da Settignano's 'St. Jerome in the Desert.'" In Idea and Image: Studies in the Italian Renaissance, pp. 137-49. London, 1978, pp. 145 - 46.[4] Saint Jerome. Select Letters of St. Jerome. Translated by F.A. Wright. Cambridge, Mass., 1933, letter no. 12, pp. 66 - 69.[5] Song of Solomon 2: 8 - 9. For a general study of the symbolic meaning of animals in the Renaissance, see Herbert Friedmann. A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art. Washington, D.C., 1980.[6] Giancarlo Gentilini. I Della Robbia: La scultura invetriata nel Rinascimento. 2 vols. Florence, 1992, p. 361.[7] Gary M. Radke. "The Sources and Composition of Benedetto da Maiano's San Savino Monument in Faenza." Studies in the History of Art (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) 18, 1985, pp. 7-27.[8] Mario Scalini in Un tesoro rilevato: Capolavori dalla Collezione Carle De Carlo. Exh. cat. edited by Mario Scalini and Angelo Tartuferi. Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence; 2001. Florence, 2001, p. 57, no. 18[9] See The Beautiful Art Treasures and Antiquities, The Property of Signor Stefano Bardini, sale cat., at American Art Galleries, New York, April 23 - 27, 1918, no. 420.[10] Francesco Caglioti. Donatello e i Medici: Storia del "David" e della "Giuditta." 2 vols. Florence, 2000, vol. 1, p. 133, n. 133, vol. 2, fig. 329.[11] Alfredo Bellandi in I Della Robbiae l'arte nuova della scultura invetriata. Exh. cat. edited by Giancarlo Gentilini. Basilica di Sant'Alessandro, Fiesole; 1998. Florence, 1998, pp. 291 - 92, no. iv.1.[12] Ibid., pp. 292 - 93, no. iv.2. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3606217 Pair of five-light candelabra. Culture: Italian, Rome. Dimensions: Overall (each): 27 × 15 15/16 in. (68.6 × 40.5 cm). Maker: Luigi Valadier (Italian, Rome 1726-1785 Rome); Possibly in collaboration with Lorenzo Cardelli. Date: 1774.After the death of his father in 1763, Prince Marcantonio Borghese (1730-1800) inherited a great fortune that included the finest private art collection in the Eternal City.[1] His subsequent role as one of the most important collector-patrons of the Neoclassical period -rivaling, in his own family, Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1576-1633) in the Early Baroque era - has not received the attention that it deserves.[2] The creator of this pair of candelabra, Luigi Valadier (1726-1785), became the principal goldsmith for Prince Marcantonio, who was close to him in age, thus extending the ties that the artisan's father, the goldsmith Andrea Valadier (d. 1757), had established to the Borghese court decades earlier.[3]The superior design and precise, finely detailed craftsmanship of the present five-light candelabra place them among the most distinguished art objects created in the second half of the eighteenth century, an exciting period of Roman creativity influenced by the theories of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the progressive inventions of Giovanni Battista Piranesi.[4] Thanks to the archival research of Alvar González-Palacios, we know a great deal about the circumstances of their manufacture. They were made for the suite of public rooms in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome that the architect Antonio Asprucci was redecorating for Prince Marcantonio.[5] They were to be displayed on two small tables - also executed in the color scheme of deep red porphyry and gilded bronze - in the Galleriola dei Cesari (so called because sixteen ancient porphyry busts of Roman emperors were on view there in niches).[6] Porphyry has been associated since Roman times with personages "born in the purple"; it is also a difficult stone to work. González-Palacios suggests that Lorenzo Cardelli, a stone carver who collaborated with Valadier on several mantelpieces of porphyry and marble the following year, made the porphyry elements for these candelabra.[7]Rising from each candelabrum's porphyry drum decorated with gilded bronze bucrania and swags in the classical style, the porphyry shaft curves up in the form of a baluster to become a small bowl at the top, decorated with gilded lions' heads and three whimsical Roman theatrical masks, from which sprout clusters of gilded bronze leaves and long branches that terminate in sockets for candles. Standing on the drum and encircling the baluster are three bronze female figures that appear to support the basin but in fact are purely decorative. Valadier's invoice for works he executed for the palazzo Borghese (dated September 6, 1774) identifies the figures as a Venus, an Amazon, and a Muse and says they were based on clsasical Roman statues.[8] The Venus, shown turned toward the shaft - the better to display her beautiful posterior - was based on an ancient marble then at the Villa Farnesina in Rome and now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. Often reproduced, in various media, it was a popular souvenir with foreign visitors on the grand tour. The figure Valadier describes as a Muse recalls the huntress Diana in the collection of the Palazzo Verospi in Rome. The prototype of the Amazon is a marble sculpture today in the Musei Vaticani. Valadier reproduced it in 1780 as a large bronze statue (now at the Château de Malmaison, outside Paris).[9]Valadier's idea of grouping three caryatid figures around the shaft of his candelabra may have originated with Piranesi, who engraved a celebrated ancient statue of the three Graces that was at the time on display in the Villa Borghese.[10] Nevertheless, both the forward-looking design and the daring combination of decorative elements with such divergent roots show that Valadier was well ahead of most contemporary makers of decorative objects. He had an important influence on English artists and metalwork, as a comparison of the upper part of his candelabra with English goldsmiths' work of the 1810s to the 1840s shows. Future research may reveal whether a similar pair of candelabra entered an influential English collection during the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, or whether an English artisan in Italy bought drawings of the candelabra home to the British Isles during those years.[11] Parallels with the oeuvre of Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy (1780-1854) are especially striking. In 1811 his British firm made for the Prince Regent a pair of candelabra with simpler ornaments and with sculptural details after English plasters that nevertheless reflect the design of the Metropolitan's candelabra.[12][Wolfram Koeppe 2008][1] González-Palacios 1995b, p. 97[2] Ibid.[3] Bulgari 1958-59, vol. 2, pp. 494, 496, 499.[4] See Koeppe in Kisluk-Grosheide, Koeppe, and Rieder 2006, p. 168, no. 70; Lawrence 2007.[5] On the redecoration of the suite of rooms on the ground floor of the palace, see Hibbard 1962.[6] On the tables, see González-Palacios in González-Palacios 1996, pp. 127-28, no. 26, pl. X.[7] González-Palacios 1995b, p. 101.[8] Alvar González-Palacios identified this document in the Archivio Segredo Vaticano, Archivio Borghese, fol. 5298 (no. 3169). It reads, in part, "due Candelabrij di profido tutti guarniti con dell'ornati e figure di metallo dorato . La Venere delle belle chiappe, L'Amazone et una Musa."[9] Note by James David Draper in the files of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum. Compare also the related Statue of a Wounded Amazon, an ancient Roman marble in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum (32.11.4).[10] Fuhring 1989, vol. 1, p. 360, no. 557, fig. 27; Lawrence 2007.[11] Valadier created a pair of candelabra that are very similar to the present examples, today at Pavlovsk Palace, near Saint Petersburg. González-Palacios suggests they may have been commissioned by Grand Duke Paul of Russia and his wife Maria Feodorovna; see González-Palacios 1995b, p. 102, n. 8; Kuchumov 1974, pl. 184.[12] This hitherto unobserved influence demands a separate study. The following sources may cast some light on the question: Carlton House 1991, p. 178, no. 151; Christie's, Monaco, July 1, 1995, sale cat., lot 30 (a similar pair). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3625749 Saint John the Baptist. Artist: Juan Martínez Montañés (Spanish, Alcalá la Real 1568-1649 Seville). Culture: Spanish, Seville. Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): H. 60 5/8 x W. 29 5/8 x D. 27 5/8 in. (154 x 75.2 x 70.2 cm). Date: ca. 1620-30.Juan Martínez Montañés was one of the greatest spanish sculptors of the first half of the seventeenth century. Based in Seville, he carved numerous wooden statues and reliefs that were painted and integrated into large altar screens called retablos (English: retables) for churches in his native region or to be shipped to the New World. His forte as an artist was the single figure, standing or seated, usually robust, naturally posed, and richly robed. Somewhat defensively, he gave his reason for this: "As for the appearance of the statues when they are seen away from their settings by those who do not understand or maliciously criticize them, we say that once they are in their places they will be very effective, and if they did not have so much drapery they would look very insignificant when they were put in compartments at a distance." [Note 1] To modern eyes, his works even when removed from their original contexts have a powerfully sculptural form; but it is important to remember how critical the original church setting was in the artist's conception. The Museum's statue of Saint John the Baptist, a rare work by the master in a collection outside Spain or South America, illustrates these points. A mature man with a powerful physique, he wears a short brown tunic cinched with a rope around the waist. A crimson robe patterned with foliage and cherub heads is draped over his shoulder and partially covers the rock formation on which he stands and leans. His left hand rests on the rock while his right reaches across his body to point. This gesture was certainly toward a missing Lamb of God on an altar in the monastery church for which Saint John was made or toward the top of a banderole with the message "Behold the Lamb of God" stuck in the ground by the saint's left foot (where a hole exists) and rising to his left shoulder. The altar of Saint John the Baptist (1635 - 37) in the Convento de Santa Paula, Seville (fig. 31), gives an idea of how this might have appeared. [Note 2] His strongly defined carved features include a thin, split goatee -- the rest of his light beard and mustache are painted -- a knot of hair over the forehead and long tousled locks, a creased forehead, and straight, subtly carved eyebrows. Made of Spanish cedar, the statue has held up relatively well over the centuries, although some fingers of the right hand have been recarved and the right arm rejoined. [Note 3]As a physical type, John the Baptist is like other statues of the saint carved by the artist. The one he made for the retablo of San Isidoro del Campo at Santiponce (after 1609) is generally similar in pose, though the raised foot of the Museum's figure makes the saint's gesture more emphatic, and its face is smoother and not quite as eloquent as here. [Note 4] Closer to this one in its powerful presence and expressive face is the Saint John the Baptist in high relief on the retablo of the Convento de San Leandro, Seville (1622 - 23). [Note 5] A dating of the Museum's statue during the artist's mature years seems to be borne out by these comparisons. Beatrice Proske assigned it to the 1620s or early 1630s. José Hernández Díaz preferred to date the figure to the first decade of the century, before the retablo of San Isidoro at Santiponce. [Note 6] He viewed the Museum's Saint John as a striking and characteristic work entirely by Martínez Montañés, but Proske thought she detected the intervention of another artist in the sculptor's workshop and described it as in the style of Montañés.Documents connect the statue to the Sevillian Convento de la Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, which was suppressed in 1837. In a notice published in 1844 that inventoried the contents of the monastery church, Félix González de León described one of its retablos: Under a big molded arch with pilasters supporting a cornice, on a high pedestal placed over the base of the retable itself stood the most beautiful figure of Saint John the Baptist ever made by the celebrated Martínez Montañés. One can hardly explain the beauties of the design and the treatment of draperies and body of this famous image, the honor of its author and its country. [Note 7]He further noted niches on either side of the statue decorated with pediments and angels and filled with paintings of stories about the saint. Relatively modest by the standards of the time, the retablo must have been somewhat like those in the Convento de Santa Paula, centered on the statue of the saint. Martínez Montañés's resolutely straightforward image with pleasing partial side views would have been well suited to such a frame. The emphatic gesture was designed to be read from a distance, and as the sculptor himself explained, the voluminous drapery would give the figure weight and solidity in the midst of such splendid decorations. The sculptor's father was an embroiderer in the city of Alcalá la Real, and the son's taste for richly decorated textiles must have developed early in life. Traditionally, Spanish sculpture of this period was painted by specialists other than the carver. This figure's relatively simple painted patterns and colors only enhance the power of the carving. NOTES1. Quoted in Proske 1967, p. 4 (translated from López Martínez 1932, p. 238).2. Proske 1967, pp. 125 - 27, figs. 193, 194.3. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Madison, Wisconsin, letter of April 25, 1966, in the curatorial files of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum. The statue was cleaned by Christine Faltermeier and the right arm reset by Rudolph Colban in the summer of 1975.4. Proske 1967, pp. 61 - 69, figs. 73, 76.5. Ibid., pp. 93 - 95, figs. 108, 109, 131. 6. Hernández Díaz 1987, pp. 261, 264.7. González de León 1844, vol. 1, pp. 228 - 29. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3681486 Study of a Young Woman in Three-quarter Bust-Length. Artist: Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) (Italian, Monticelli 1503-1572 Florence). Dimensions: Sheet: 7 5/8 × 5 5/16 in. (19.4 × 13.5 cm). Date: ca. 1540-42.The surviving corpus of securely attributed drawings by Bronzino numbers around sixty-two, or so sheets. This is by all accounts an extraordinarily small number for a Tuscan artist of his generation. The Museum was fortunate to acquire this drawing which was unknown until its discovery at auction in 2013. It is a sketch after a living model, and belongs with a small group of Bronzino's sheets of ca. 1540-45 for the frescoes and altarpiece in the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), because of its style, technique, design, and pictorial approach to life drawing. As is seen here, the most plentiful kind of drawing by Bronzino to have survived, his life-studies of the figure (or "ritratti dal naturale") are quietly about the humble, flesh-and-blood models who were his subjects, and who posed in the studio for the invention of his pictures. The Met's study is drawn in the artist's typical style and technique of the early 1540s in black chalk on off-white paper that was prepared with a thinly applied gray-blue wash layer; the paper on the verso is left without color. The closest comparison for the Met's drawing is Bronzino's life study of ca. 1540-41, for St. Michael on the vault fresco of the Chapel of Eleonora (Musée du Louvre 6356, Paris), which exhibits an identical technique of execution in black chalk on off-white paper colored with a preparation of gray-blue wash: the paper on the verso is left similarly unprepared. The technique of Bronzino's modello of ca. 1540 for the vault fresco of the chapel (Städelsches Kunstinstitut 4344, Frankfurt), which was probably produced before the architect Giambattista di Marco del Tasso had fully completed the building (hence the great differences of design), is also similarly on off-white paper prepared with gray-blue wash, although it was drawn with a combination of media in pen and brown ink with wash and white gouache highlights. Bronzino used off-white papers prepared with colored wash mostly in the Chapel of Eleonora drawings, as in the study of ca. 1541-42, for the youth seen from behind in the Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, in which the paper is prepared with wash of a mustard or pale yellow hue (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 6704 F, Florence). Soon after 1545-46, however, when Bronzino was urgently pressed for time and practicality as he started to produce copious designs for the tapestries commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici, he began using manufactured blue paper (carta azzurra) as in the modello for the tapestry of Justice Liberating Innocence (Biblioteca Pinacoteca Ambrosiana F 261 inf. no. 65, fol. 61, Milan), and in the drawing for the borders of the Story of Joseph Tapestries (British Museum Pp. 2-95, London), rather than laboriously hand-preparing off-white paper with colored wash as in the Chapel of Eleonora drawings. The figure in the Met's sheet is closely observed from life without embellishment of head or body. As seen here, in almost all of Bronzino's figure studies for paintings of the 1530s and 1540s the individual identity of his models in both a physical and psychological sense shines through. Drawn in black chalk on unprepared off-white paper, and also very closely related in style, the study of ca. 1543-45 for the head of the aristocratic woman onlooker toward the center in the Besançon version of the altarpiece of the Lamentation portrays the model wearing a simple, adherent cap instead of the eventual, intricately jeweled coiffure (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 10894 F, Florence). Moreover, the fine, portrait-like features of the woman in the Uffizi study, in which the sharp angle of view adds to the mood of nearly familial intimacy, assume in the painting the idealized physiognomy of a marble Roman matron, who is meant to be dressed like a lady in the Duchess Eleonora di Toledo's court. In the Met's sheet, the bodice of the woman's humble dress and a veil or shawl wrapping over her left shoulder are also lightly indicated. Some tendrils of hair are evident toward the right side of the forehead. The short nose with an almost rectilinear nostril, the small, somewhat square chin (which is very forcefully outlined), and the smooth fleshiness of the cheeks communicate the quiet, portrait-like dimension of this particular study of the living model. This is yet a further hallmark of Bronzino's figural style and approach in his life drawings of the early 1540s: as seen here, many, subtly naturalistic details closely observed from the model begin to inform the limpid clarity of form, with outlines always delicately descriptive, and with interior modeling that always clearly defines the sculptural values of the figure. As is also characteristic for Bronzino at this time, the contours defining the figure throughout the Met's drawing pulsate with dynamic effects of tone: the outlines vary in darkness and light in concert with the inner modeling, and dark outlines are often immediately edged with light. Evident only close-up, so subtle is the pulitezza (the ideal of cleanliness) of Bronzino's draftsmanship, are the lighter strokes of the chalk in minutely parallel, searching outlines that ubiquitously accompany the firmer, bolder contours. Light catches the outline of the neck as if it were a delicate edge of form in a way that is entirely typical of his drawings of the late 1530s to early 1540s. Her head is inclined with an elegant though credibly life-like turn of the long neck as she pensively lowers her eyes; her mouth with just a hint of the parting of the lips communicates life, as if the figure had momentarily arrested breathing. It is this immediacy and the portrait-like individuality and naturalism which Bronzino all too often thoroughly sacrificed in his finished paintings (though not in the Medici portraits), almost to the point of lifelessness, in order to produce the monumental, profoundly idealized, abstracted figures that intricately inform the complex layers of illusionistic form and iconographic meaning in his elegant compositions. This is especially the case in the virtuosic fresco program of the Chapel of Eleonora.(Carmen C. Bambach; April 23, 2015). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

alb3652404 Etruscan Candelabrum Finial (from Cassiano dal Pozzo's 'Paper Museum'). Artist: Anonymous, Italian, Roman-Bolognese, 17th century. Dimensions: 8-1/4 x 5-5/16 in. (21.0 x 13.5 cm). Date: 1620-40.This highly worked up drawing in red chalk portrays in great detail an Etruscan bronze candelabrum finial, of the late Archaic period and datable about 510-480 BC, that is also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection (47.11.3), and is on view in Gallery 170, Department of Greek and Roman Art. This drawing is surprisingly close in scale to the actual object. The bronze finial represents a pair of warriors, one wounded and limping who is supported by the other. This is therefore a rare and felicitous instance in which both the visual source and the drawing are owned by the same institution.This drawing is in a style and on an annotated mount that are typical of the "Paper Museum," or Museo Cartaceo, that was compiled in Rome by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1598-1657) with the help of his brother, Carlo Antonio. The original of the Etruscan sculpture represented in the drawing was at the time in the collection of Cardinal Albani, as is stated in the inscription on the mount. Henrietta Ryan (Deputy Curator of the Print Room, Royal Library, Windsor Castle) examined this drawing in 1999, on behalf of the Cassiano dal Pozzo Catalogue Committee, and plans to publish it along with other sheets in the forthcoming catalogue of Cassiano dal Pozzo's Museo Cartaceo. Another drawing copying a Sleeping Cupid also emanates from Cassiano dal Pozzo's Museo Cartaceo and is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (45.36).The most exact comparisons for the style and drawing technique in red chalk are the illustrations of antiquities found in the MS Franks, vol. 2 (especially fols. 83, 84, 125, 126, 128, nos. 418, 419, 514, 515, 517), at the British Museum, London. The Metropolitan Museum's drawing is pasted onto a characteristic "Type A" mount trimmed at the top and the sides (Mark McDonald, communication on August 5, 2014). Part of Cassiano dal Pozzo's collection of drawings focused on recording the archaeological and sculptural remains of antiquity with an encyclopedic range and systematic rigor of graphic description. Cassiano commissioned a variety of artists to execute his drawings. The Museo Cartaceo was probably enriched by Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692-1779), the eminent collector and nephew of Pope Clement XI and who is mentioned in the inscription on the mount of the present drawing. The albums comprising the Museo Cartaceo constitute one of the milestones in the history of taste during the 17th and 18th centuries. The interpretation of Classical antiquity was among the chief concerns of artists and intellectuals of the period.As reconstructed by John Gere and Henrietta Ryan, the distinguished provenance for this and related drawings from Cassiano dal Pozzo's Museo Cartaceo is uninterrupted into modern times. The various owners of the drawings were among the most erudite antiquarians of their day, and the drawings as a group constitute a major chapter in the history of taste and collecting. See ex-collectors.(Carmen C. Bambach; August 5, 2014). Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.