Agostino Carracci

Sagredo-Borghese Collection, numbered on the old mount: S.B. n^o: 62; and on the reverse of the old backing sheet: S.B. 11. S.; S.B 63 (both crossed out); S.B.n^o: 2;
sale, Monaco, Christie's, 2 July 1993, lot 42; acquired at the sale 

Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Verso: The Flipside of Master Drawings, May-August 2001, no. 9 

A.L. Clark (ed.), Mastery and Elegance, Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, Cambridge 1998, p. 84, fig. 7;
J. Unglaub, 'A New Drawing for the Engraving of St. Jerome by Agostino Carracci', in Master Drawings, vol. 45, no. 2, Summer 2007, pp. 216-7, reproduced fig. 8 

Sold mounted and framed in a modern gilded wood frame. Window mounted, laid down on the old album sheet, although part of this has been cut away to reveal the drawing on the verso. There are two very small nicks at the centre of the upper edge, and two small red/brown paint stains - one at the upper centre, another, even smaller, at centre of left ege. There are some very small, isolated fox marks, but otherwise the sheet is clear. The verso has been reinforced with a small patch of japan paper, behind Jerome's lower leg. Overall, however, the condition is good.
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This study is one of a series of drawings made by Agostino in preparation for his best known engraving, St Jerome (fig. 1).  Dated circa 1602, the print is thought to be Agostino's last, as it was left unfinished at the time of his death, and was later completed by Francesco Brizio at the instigation of his master, Lodovico Carracci.  The print is known in four states, the first of which shows Agostino's brief indications with the burin in the areas which were not worked up before his death.  In comparison to the most complete extant compositional study, the engraving, albeit unfinished, is far more elaborate, indicating that the artist may have been happy to work out the details of the composition with the burin.¹

Several other preparatory drawings are known, which show the artist experimenting with various ideas before reaching his final solution.  In the two sheets at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt and the Royal Library, Windsor, Agostino experiments with both the position of the figure and the setting of the composition,² so that the saint either kneels before an altar in contemplation of the crucifix, or rests his head upon his hand as he studies at his desk.  These motifs are combined in the Horvitz sheet.  Another drawing, formerly in the Avnet collection, places the saint in an outdoor setting, kneeling before a rock, as in the most complete compositional drawing and the print itself.³  A double-sided sheet, formerly also in the Horvitz collection,⁴ adopts a similar solution, adding a putto supporting the crucifix that the saint contemplates.  

In two further drawings at Windsor, Agostino studies alternative positions for St. Jerome's lion, although the lion that sleeps by the saint's feet in the present drawing is, in fact, far closer to the final print.⁵   In terms of the position of St. Jerome, the studies that are closest to the present sheet are a newly-discovered drawing in a private collection in New York, and one in the Département des Arts Graphiques at the Louvre.⁶  The former appears to have been drawn first, as both figure and setting are more abbreviated than in the Horvitz sheet, while the Louvre drawing, the most elaborate of the three, would appear to have been executed last.

Agostino spent the last two years of his life in Parma, probably at the invitation of Odoardo Farnese, who commissioned from him the paintings in the Palazzo del Giardino.⁷  The artist had already travelled to Parma in the 1580s, but this later visit seemed to reawaken in him an appreciation of the works of the Emilian mannerists.  The elaborate pen work, elongated torsos, and other parallels with the work of Parmigianino are clear in many of the preparatory drawings for the Saint Jerome print, particularly in the double-sided sheet in Frankfurt.⁸ Indeed, the figure on the verso of the Horvitz drawing is a copy of Enea Vico's engraving of Lucretia, after Parmigianino.⁹  Agostino was not only interested in absorbing the lessons of Parmigianino, but was also studying how the work of his predecessor could best be translated into print.  Even at this advanced stage of his career, Agostino was clearly engaging with new ideas, and striving to continue his development as a draughtsman and printmaker.

1. D. DeGrazia Bohlin, Prints and Related Drawings by the Carracci Family: A catalogue Raisonné, exhibition catalogue, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1979, no. 213, pp. 346-351

2. Ibid., p. 350, figs. 213a - 213c

3. Ibid. figs. 213d, 213g

4. Purchased London, Phillips, 9 July 2001, lot 143, and now on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reproduced

5. DeGrazia Bohlin, op. cit., figs. 213c, 213f

6. J. Unglaub, op. cit., figs. 3 and 9

7. DeGrazia Bohlin, op. cit., p. 45

8. DeGrazia Bohlin, op. cit., p. 45 and p.66, note 66

9. See D. Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, New Haven and London 2006, p. 237, fig. 264