1537-1538<\/p>\n
Cartoon.<\/p>\n
Vasari, 1568, II, 211-212 (Vasari-Milanesi, V, 171-172), in his \u201cLife\u201d of Rosso: \u201c…si trovarono anco fra le sue cose dopo, che fu morto due bellissimi cartoni. in uno de\u2019quali \u00e8 una Leda,… e nell\u2019altro la Sibilla Tiburtina, che mostra \u00e0 Ottaviano Imperadore la Vergine gloriosa, con Christo nato in collo.\u00a0 Et in questo fece il RE Francesco, la Reina, la guardia, e il popolo con tanto numero di figure, e si ben fatte, che si puo dire con verita, che questa fusse una delle belle cose, che mai facesse il Rosso.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Herbet, 1902, 61 (1969, 213), 5, thought an anonymous print (Fig.Trento, after Parmigianino?, London<\/a>) that he gave to the School of Fontainebleau might be related to this lost work.2<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Rosso\u2019s lost work was mentioned by Kusenberg, 1931, 102, who then, 202, n. 238, referred to the comment in the first edition of Vasari\u2019s Lives<\/i> of the \u201cesquisse d\u2019un tableau \u00e9x\u00e9cut\u00e9 par le Rosso pour le chapitre de la Sainte-Chapelle, dont il \u00e9tait chanoine.\u201d \u00a0Kusenberg did not, however, conclude that this work was to be identified with the lost Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl<\/i>.\u00a0 Lebel, 1937, 30, related the lost cartoon to Caron\u2019s painting in the Louvre, stating in regard to Vasari\u2019s description of it, \u201cc\u2019est pr\u00e9cisement la donn\u00e9e exacte de notre tableau [by Caron] en substituant Henri III et Catherine de M\u00e9dicis \u00e0 Fran\u00e7ois Ier<\/sup> et \u00e0 la reine, et cela \u00e0 trente ans de distance.\u201d\u00a0 The influence of Rosso\u2019s cartoon on Caron\u2019s painting was again stated by Lebel, \u201cAntoine Caron,\u201d 1937, 324-325.\u00a0 This influence was accepted by Jean Adh\u00e9mar, \u201cAntoine Caron et son influence,\u201d M\u00e9decine de France<\/i>, XX, 1951, 28, n. 13.\u00a0 Adh\u00e9mar, Dessin<\/i>, 1954, 105 (1955, 104), suggested that Vasari was mistaken and was actually speaking of Caron\u2019s painting.\u00a0 B\u00e9guin, 1960, 43, 88, believed Caron\u2019s painting was probably inspired by Rosso\u2019s lost work.\u00a0 B\u00e9guin, in EdF<\/i>, 1972, 32, 35, under no. 34, with full bibliography on Caron\u2019s painting, again stated that Rosso\u2019s work without doubt influenced Caron\u2019s painting.<\/p>\n The print that Herbet thought was related to Rosso\u2019s lost work is specifically based on a composition by Parmigianino.3<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 It is Caron\u2019s painting in the Louvre that has most seriously and continuously been thought to be closely dependent on Rosso\u2019s lost cartoon.4<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Lebel, 1937, 32, claimed to recognize Henri III in the distance at the left and Catherine de\u2019Medici in the middle distance near the center, which would be substitutes for Francis I and his queen in Rosso\u2019s cartoon.\u00a0 Then in the center and left foreground would be recognized the \u201cguardia\u201d mentioned by Vasari, and across the middle distance, \u201cil popolo.\u201d\u00a0 The painting has been dated around 1562-1563 and, because of its costumes, around 1575-1580, that is, between twenty and forty years after Rosso\u2019s death, and one might suppose that the painting\u2019s extensive space and the wide spacing of its figures and architecture are dependent on an interpretation of Rosso\u2019s scene as would be possible at this time, for there are no works by Rosso that show these characteristics.\u00a0 Nor is the architecture in Caron\u2019s painting anything like what appears in Rosso\u2019s works.\u00a0 The graceful figures, also, bear no resemblance to Rosso\u2019s generally more complexly postured and more diversely characterized ones.\u00a0 It might also be questioned that the lost cartoon showing the king and the queen would have been described to Vasari as having these figures if they were so insignificant as the supposed royal figures are in Caron\u2019s painting.<\/p>\n Lebel, 1940, 12-17, showed how Caron\u2019s painting is related to a Mystery Play that was first performed in Rouen in 1474, but also in Paris in 1553, 1575, and 1580, and in which appeared three officers with Augustus: Jedebos, Joab, and Elnathan.\u00a0 These apparently would be the three men in the left foreground of Caron\u2019s painting.\u00a0 Lebel (1937, 30-33, and 1940, 323-324) also related the setting of the scene to the settings in other works by Caron, to the festival architecture that Caron would have been responsible for, and to contemporary French architecture.\u00a0 All of these sources can account for the style of the setting of Caron\u2019s painting without recourse to Rosso\u2019s lost cartoon.\u00a0 But Lebel, 1937, 29-30, did indicate that while the subject of Augustus and the Sibyl is not unusual in French art, the composition of Caron\u2019s painting is unlike any other.\u00a0 This, however, does not require that its uniqueness is due to Rosso rather than to Caron\u2019s own inventiveness, for Caron\u2019s painting is, indeed, very much like his own other works, none of which seems to be related to Rosso\u2019s art.<\/p>\n Although it is possible that Caron\u2019s painting bears some relation to Rosso\u2019s painting, at least in regard to the depiction of \u201cla guardia, e il popolo,\u201d on the basis of its style, its composition, and its details, the Louvre painting cannot be recognized as giving serious evidence of the appearance of Rosso\u2019s lost cartoon.\u00a0 It might also be suggested that any similarity that Rosso\u2019s cartoon and Caron\u2019s painting might seem to have through Vasari\u2019s description is due to Rosso himself having been inspired by another performance of the same mystery play that Caron knew, or the text of it, and which required \u201cla guardia, e il popolo\u201d as part of its cast.<\/p>\n Vasari mentioned only the cartoon of Rosso\u2019s Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl<\/i> and it is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that as it survived Rosso was still working on this project when he died.\u00a0 Vasari did not say for whom the cartoon was made.\u00a0 But in the first edition of the Lives<\/i> he said that Rosso \u201cFece ancora un cartone per fare una tavola alla Congregazione del capitolo, dove era canonico\u201d (see L.57<\/a>), but he did not give the subject of that work.\u00a0 It is very possible that this cartoon was the same one as that of the Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl<\/i> and that its composition, invented late in 1537 or early in 1538, was to be painted in Notre Dame on a wall above the \u201cautel des ardents\u201d at the back of the sanctuary behind the high altar (see L.54-L.56).<\/p>\n There are four wall areas above the \u201cautel des ardents\u201d on which this painting could have been executed.\u00a0 At the ground and gallery levels there are the walls above the large arches of the chevet.\u00a0 At the gallery level there is also the smaller wall area above and between the smaller arches under the large arch.\u00a0 Then at the very top of the church is a triangular vault.\u00a0 Given these locations on the central axis of the church, Rosso\u2019s composition may have been a more symmetrical one than that of Caron\u2019s picture.\u00a0 The vision could have been in the center with Augustus and the Sibyl on one side and Francis I and his queen on the other both looking up at the Virgin and Child.\u00a0 Such a visionary scene would have been appropriate on a vault above the heads of the spectators.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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