{"id":6982,"date":"2012-09-27T17:39:06","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T21:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/?page_id=6982"},"modified":"2013-06-05T15:08:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-05T19:08:48","slug":"rd-25","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/catalogues\/rejected-paintings-sculpture\/rd-25\/","title":{"rendered":"RD.25 Preaching of St. John the Baptist (?)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

RD.25 Preaching of St. John the Baptist (?)<\/p><\/div>\n

Oxford, Christ Church, no. 1148.<\/p>\n

Fig.RD.25<\/a><\/p>\n

Red chalk, somewhat rubbed, and at the left edge a hand holding a staff gone over in ink; indented with a stylus in places, 26.3 x 15.2; four corners cut; laid down.\u00a0 Damaged at the back of the figure of Saint John, and filled.\u00a0 Inscribed in pencil on the mat below: Pontormo<\/em> in a nineteenth century hand, and Rosso Fiorentino JCR<\/em> [J. C. Robinson\u2019s hand].<\/p>\n

PROVENANCE: John Guise (see Lugt 2754).<\/p>\n

LITERATURE:<\/p>\n

Carroll, 1964 (1976), I, Bk. I, 27-34, II, Bk. II, 191-194, D. 5, Bk. III, Fig. 13, as Rosso, around 1516-1517.<\/p>\n

Byam Shaw, 1972, 44-45, no. 63, Fig. 63, as Rosso, not much later than 1521, the truncated right arm of the figure in the foreground suggested by the Torso Belvedere.<\/p>\n

Byam Shaw, 1976, I, 66, no. 124, Pl. 90, as Rosso, around 1517 (on my indication).<\/p>\n

David Summers, \u201cContrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art,\u201d AB<\/em> LIX, 1977, 337, n. 10, as Rosso, the left foreground figure with mutilated arm evidently quoting the Torso Belvedere in reverse.<\/p>\n

Ward, 1982, 179, n. 20, as Rosso, the foreground figure at left inspired by the Belvedere Torso.<\/p>\n

Darragon, 1983, 32-33, Fig. 8, as Rosso, around 1516-1517.<\/p>\n

Wilmes, 1985, 85, seems to accept Rosso\u2019s authorship.<\/p>\n

Carroll, 1987, 58, n. 4, under no. 2, as not by Rosso.<\/p>\n

Franklin, 1988, 324, 325, Fig. 86, as Rosso, in the second half of the 1510s, the man in the foreground with truncated arm copied by Bandinelli or someone in his shop in a sheet sold in London (Sotheby\u2019s, October 30, 1980, lot 8, as Bandinelli).<\/p>\n

Smith, in Petrioli Tofani and Smith, 1988, 53, under no. 23, as Rosso.<\/p>\n

Franklin, 1994, 275, n. 50, to be placed with Bandinelli and his circle along with the (so-called) Skeletons<\/em> [D.1] and the Old Testament Scene<\/em> [RD.19].<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robinson\u2019s attribution of this drawing to Rosso, accepted (in 1959) by Philip Pouncey, who brought the sheet to my attention, was also accepted by me in 1964, and subsequently by everyone else who has written of the drawing or mentioned it.\u00a0 But by 1987 I no longer believed this attribution.<\/p>\n

My questioning of Rosso\u2019s authorship stems from several strange features: the appearance of a large hand and staff at the left, the cut-off right arm of the left nude in the foreground, and the placement of St. John\u2019s right arm – if the emaciated nude at the right is St. John – which disappears behind the most distant figure in the center of the drawing, although the saint\u2019s size indicates that he is much nearer to the foreground of the scene.\u00a0 The first detail indicates that the drawing is cut at the left but the missing figure must have been standing in a position that would have made the more or less symmetrical composition of the scene as it now is quite asymmetrical.\u00a0 The two nudes in the foreground are unusual, unless they imply a scene of baptism, but the mutilation of one of them is hardly called for by this subject.\u00a0 The emaciated nude seems to have been conceived for some other composition and then inserted into this one.\u00a0 In retrospect, the missing figure at the left and the two nudes in the foreground also indicate something of the piecemeal nature of the scene.\u00a0 The subject of the drawing is also not clear.\u00a0 While the emaciated figure would seem to be St. John, he holds or wears nothing that specifically requires this identification, and while he seems to be preaching, the nudes in the foreground suggest, as I have already said, the scene of St. John baptizing.\u00a0 I am inclined to believe that the composition is in fact pieced together and cut and that the stylus marks on the drawing indicate the transfer of parts of the scene from another sheet or sheets.<\/p>\n

These aspects of the Christ Church drawing are not to be found in Rosso\u2019s authentic works, and not in the Disputation of the Angel of Death and the Devil<\/em>\u00a0of 1517 (Fig.D.1a<\/a>), to which the Oxford drawing would seem, largely because of its emaciated old man, to be most closely related.\u00a0 The line of figures in the Oxford drawing might also be related to the arrangement of the figures to the left in Rosso\u2019s drawing of 1517.\u00a0 But the figures in Rosso\u2019s drawing are far less strictly aligned.\u00a0 There is in Rosso\u2019s drawing much more diversity both in the appearance and in the arrangement of the figures than in the Oxford drawing, and Rosso\u2019s drawing of 1517 is clearer in its dramatic focus.<\/p>\n

The one armed figure in the Christ Church drawing finds no companions in Rosso\u2019s other works.\u00a0 However, a figure with such an abruptly truncated arm can be found among Bandinelli\u2019s drawings, in particular his Nude Man seated on a grassy bank<\/em> in the Wald Collection (no. 65), a figure that Ward noted was also done after the Belvedere Torso, which again, according to Ward, Bandinelli could have known already upon his first visit to Rome in the spring of 1514.1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Ward found this drawing very different from the nude resembling the Belvedere Torso in the Oxford drawing – the left nude – the \u201chard chiaroscuro<\/em>\u201d of Bandinelli\u2019s drawing creating \u201ca study of mass and volume,\u201d with the Christ Church drawing showing the bulk of the figure reduced \u201cto an insubstantial and weightless silhouette.\u201d\u00a0 I see little difference between the two figures except that in the Wald drawing (which I know only from Ward\u2019s illustration) the nude is isolated, while in the Oxford drawing he is seen in the context of other figures, which, so far as I see it, makes him look less silhouetted.\u00a0 It seems to me quite possible that both are by the same artist.\u00a0 Compositionally the Oxford drawing very much resembles the Council of the Gods<\/em>, known from Agostino Veneziano\u2019s engraving of 1516, the design of which Bartsch gave to Bandinelli (Fig.Veneziano, Gods)<\/a>.2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The pen drawing of four male nudes sold at Sotheby\u2019s in 1980 (Fig.Bandinelli, Sotheby\u2019s<\/a>) shows, as Franklin pointed out, the same figure with his right arm cut off as appears in the Oxford drawing.3<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 But it is not copied from the Oxford drawing.\u00a0 The nude is seen from a different angle such that the end of the stump of his right arm is visible, his head is raised up, and he has quite a different type of head.\u00a0 Both figures would seem to go back to a common model, perhaps a wax or clay statuette made with the Belvedere Torso in mind.\u00a0 The drawing was sold as Bandinelli\u2019s.\u00a0 It could be his, or, as Franklin indicated, by someone in his shop.<\/p>\n

The line of figures at the left resembles the similar arrangement in the Old Testament Scene<\/em> (Fig.RD.19, recto<\/em><\/a>) and in the Clinton drawing (Fig.RD.18<\/a>), where also the head at the far right recalls the head in reverse at the far left of the Oxford sheet.\u00a0 In these correspondences might eventually be realized the discovery of who did these drawings, and when they were done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

<\/a>1<\/sup> Ward, 1982, 179, n. 20, 309-310, no. 230, Fig. 19.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>2<\/sup> Florence, Uffizi, 507ss.\u00a0 Bartsch, XIV, 1813, 193-194, 241.\u00a0 Carroll, 1964 (1976), II, Bk II, 535, Bk. III, Fig. 225, as after Bandinelli.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>3<\/sup> Catalogue of Old Master Drawings<\/em>, Sotheby\u2019s, London, October 30, 1980, 8, lot 8, Pl. VII, as pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk, 27.3 x 21; inscribed at the upper right of the recto<\/em>: 15<\/em>, and in ink on the verso<\/em>: Collectione St maurice Soubert \/ et martini \/ Baccio Bandinellij<\/em>.\u00a0 I would like to thank Elizabeth Llewellyn for the photograph of this drawing.\u00a0 The drawing was bought by Piero Scarpa, Venice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oxford, Christ Church, no. 1148. Fig.RD.25 Red chalk, somewhat rubbed, and at the left edge a hand holding a staff gone over in ink; indented with a stylus in places, 26.3 x 15.2; four corners cut; laid down.\u00a0 Damaged at the back of the figure of Saint John, and filled.\u00a0 Inscribed in pencil on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":1357,"menu_order":125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6982","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6982"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9453,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6982\/revisions\/9453"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}