Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Baldassare Peruzzi - Drawings in the British Museum

attributed to Baldassare Peruzzi
Three Sibyls
ca. 1505
preparatory drawing for fresco in the church of Sant'Onofrio, Rome
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Seated woman wearing classical dress
ca. 1510
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Courtesan and two lovers (recto)
ca. 1511
drawing for presumed painting, with proportion marks
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Courtesan and two lovers (verso) 
study-heads and satyr
ca. 1511
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Tiber statue discovered in 1512 in Rome
ca. 1512-20
drawing
British Museum

"According to the detailed account of the statue's discovery written by Grossino, in his letters from Rome to the Gonzaga court, the Tiber was found slightly damaged: there were gaps in the wolf's snout and in the twins' heads, the main figure was without a nose, and almost the entire oar was broken away.  Although the drawing restores all the missing parts except for the oar, the hypothesis that it could have been executed in connection with an early restoration of the statue around 1524-1525, by which time the fountain had already been set up in the Vatican Belvedere, seems at variance with the oblique viewpoint, in line with and at the same height as the bent knee of the right leg. The foreshortened view deviates from the careful frontal rendering of the best-known graphic representations and does not place the figure in any relationship to the surrounding space.  It has been noted that the figure's pose is related to figures Peruzzi painted in the lunettes of the ceiling of the Loggia della Galatea in the Villa Farnesina about 1510-1511, which would reinforce Pouncey and Gere's proposed date of the sheet between 1512 and 1520.  Their quite plausible hypothesis is that the drawing could have been a study for one of the river god figures frescoed in monochrome by Peruzzi (according to Armenini) on the facade of a house that Vasari says belonged to Francesco Buzio, near Piazza Altieri, not far from where the two statues would have been recovered.  This would also explain the style of the drawing, which, with its extensive use of diluted ink and strongly rendered light, looks more like a study for a painting than a purely visual document carefully copied from the antique."

 Giorgio Marini, curator of drawings and prints at the Uffizi in Florence, writing in the exhibition catalogue (of exceptional beauty)  From Raphael to Carracci: The Art of Papal Rome, edited by David Franklin (National Gallery of Canada, 2009) 

Baldassare Peruzzi
Cybele or Roma on chariot drawn by lions
(Float celebrating the granting of Roman citizenship to Giuliano and Lorenzo de 'Medici)
ca. 1513
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Design for palace façade with arms of Pope Leo X de' Medici
and those of Cardinals Franciotto Orsini and Bandinello de' Sauli
ca. 1513-17
drawing
British Museum

"The arms on the left-hand smaller shield are those of Cardinal Franciotto Orsini, and on the right-hand one those of Cardinal Bandinello de' Sauli.  Originally both shields contained the latter's arms: Orsini's are drawn, by Peruzzi himself, on another piece of paper carefully stuck over the left-hand shield.  The drawing is evidently a study for a tabernacle-like decoration on a palace façade.  The spring of lateral arches (windows?) is indicated on either side, half-way up each column.  . . .  The decoration was evidently commissioned by Sauli (created 1511), who was implicated in the Petrucci conspiracy against the life of Leo, and was arrested on 19 May 1517.  Though he was soon released and lived on in retirement till March 1518, it is improbable that he would have commissioned such a decoration after his disgrace.  The drawing can therefore be dated between 1513, when Leo became Pope, and 1517, or at latest 1518.  The design must have been adapted for Orsini (created June 1517, died 1533 or 1534).  The fact that Leo's name was painted out while the papal arms were left unchanged suggests that this adaptation was made during the pontificate of Clement VII (1523-34), [both Leo and Clement being Medici popes]."

 curator's notes from the British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Frieze design for palace façade, with armorial devices of Cardinal Ercole Rangone
ca. 1517-27
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Design for metal dish
with Pharoah's host destroyed in the Red Sea at center and the story of Joseph on the rim
ca. 1520
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Architectural designs for a chapel
ca. 1521-23
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Façade of San Petronio, Bologna
ca. 1522-23
drawing
British Museum

"Later, having been summoned to Bologna by the Wardens of Works of S. Petronio, to the end that he might make the model for the façade of that church, he made for this two large ground-plans and two elevations, one in the modern manner and the other in the German; and the latter is still preserved in the Sacristy of the same S. Petronio, as a truly extraordinary work, since he drew the building in such sharply-detailed perspective that it appears to be in relief.  In the house of Count Giovan Battista Bentivogli, in the same city, he made several drawings for the aforesaid structure [one is directly above], which were so beautiful, that it is not possible to praise enough the wonderful expedients sought out by this man in order not to destroy the old masonry, but to join it in beautiful proportion with the new.  For the Count Giovan Battista mentioned above he made the design of the Nativity with the Magi [directly below], in chiaroscuro, wherein it is a marvellous thing to see the horses, the equipage, and the courts of the three Kings, executed with supreme beauty and grace, as are also the walls of the temples and some buildings round the hut. This work was afterwards given to be coloured by the Count to Girolamo Trevigi [Girolamo da Treviso] who brought it to a fine completion."

 Giorgio Vasari, from the life of Baldassare Peruzzi in The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)

Baldassare Peruzzi
Adoration of the Magi
cartoon for painting [directly below] by Girolamo da Treviso
ca. 1522-23
drawing on tinted paper
British Museum

Girolamo da Treviso after Baldassare Peruzzi
Adoration of the Magi
1524-25
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Two generations later the great Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) made a meticulous engraving after the same still-famous drawing by Peruzzi 

Agostino Carracci after Baldassare Peruzzi
Adoration of the Magi
1579
engraving
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Virgin and Child with St Bernardino and St Catherine of Siena
ca. 1527-32
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Design for octagonal marble pulpit with statues and reliefs
ca. 1532
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Baldassare Peruzzi
Apollo, Athena, and seven Muses
from a sarcophagus relief then in the Villa Giustiniani, Rome
before 1536
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Seated man wearing Phrygian cap
before 1536
drawing
British Museum

"And yet, although the talents and labours of this noble craftsman were so great, they brought much more benefit to others than to himself; for, while he was employed by Popes, Cardinals, and other great and rich persons, not one of them ever gave him any remarkable reward.  That this should have happened is not surprising, not so much through want of liberality in such patrons, although for the most part they are least liberal where they should be the very opposite, as through the timidity and excessive modesty, or rather, to be more exact in this case, the lack of shrewdness of Baldassare.  To tell the truth, in proportion as one should be discreet with magnanimous and liberal Princes, so should one always be pressing and importunate with such as are miserly, unthankful, and discourteous, for the reason that, even as in the case of the generous importunate asking would always be a vice, so with the miserly it is a virtue, and with such men it is discretion that would be the vice."

"In the last years of his life, then, Baldassare found himself poor and weighed down by his family.  Finally, having always lived a life without reproach, he fell grievously ill, and took to his bed; and Pope Paul III, hearing this, and recognizing too late the harm that he was like to suffer in the loss of so great a man, sent Jacopo Melighi, the accountant of S. Pietro, to give him a present of one hundred crowns, and to make him most friendly offers.  However, his sickness increased, either because it was so ordained, or, as many believe, because his death was hastened with poison by some rival who desired his place, from which he drew two hundred and fifty crowns of salary; and, the physicians discovering this too late, he died, very unwilling to give up his life, more on account of his poor family than for his own sake, as he thought in what sore straits he was leaving them.  He was much lamented by his children and his friends, and he received honourable burial, next to Raffaello da Urbino, in the Ritonda, whither he was followed by all the painters, sculptors, and architects of Rome, doing him honour and bewailing him."     

– Giorgio Vasari, from the life of Baldassare Peruzzi in The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)