* Giovanni Battista Naldini Fiesole circa 1537 - 1591 Florence

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Description

Giovanni Battista Naldini
study for the lower half of an ascension, with the twelve apostles, saint agnes and saint helen
pen and brown ink and wash on paper washed pink

Provenance

Padre Sebastiano Resta;
John, Lord Somers, his numbering lower center : m157 and attribution to Cesare Nebbia (on the mount);
H. S. Olivier (L.1373)

Exhibited

Indiana, University of Notre Dame and Binghamton, University Art Gallery, State University of New York, The Age of Vasari, 1970, cat. no. D11, reproduced;
New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings: Form and Function, 1974, cat. no. 31, reproduced;
Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum, et al., From Studio to Studiolo, 1992, cat. no. 33, reproduced

Literature

Catherine Monbeig-Goguel, Vasari et son temps, Paris 1972, p. 91, under cat. no. 96;
Roseline Bacou and Françoise Viatte, Dessins italiens de la Renaissance, exh. cat. Paris, Louvre, 1975, under cat. no. 35

Catalogue Note

This drawing is a preparatory study for the lower half of the Ascension of Christ, an altarpiece painted by Naldini before 1576 for the church of Santa Maria delle Carmine in Florence. The painting, once on the main altar of the Chapel of Saint Agnes, was irreparably damaged in a fire in 1771. The commission was initially awarded in 1564-65 to Maso da San Friano, by Elena Ottonelli for the Compagnia di Santa Agnese (hence the presence of the two female saints). Maso died, however, in 1571, having prepared only the final drawing. Naldini inherited the commission and made use of Maso's design, known today through a modello and four further studies, all in the Uffizi, Florence (see Peter Cannon Brookes, 'Three Notes on Maso da San Friano,' in the Burlington Magazine, vol. 107, April 1965, pp. 195-196, figs. 32-36).

Although the painting by Naldini is now lost, an oil modello has survived (fig. 1) which was first attributed to Naldini by Philip Pouncey and was acquired in 1964 by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The present drawing compares closely with the only other known study by the artist for this composition, now in the Louvre, which is executed in red chalk and wash and was first attributed to Naldini by Roseline Bacou. It was Catherine Monbeig Goguel (loc. cit.), who recognized the connection with the lost altarpiece by Naldini and suggested that the Louvre drawing is a first idea for the lower part of the painting. She also discussed the present study, and the differences in technique between the two drawings. The suggestion made by Larry Feinberg (in the 1992 Oberlin exhibition catalogue, op. cit.) that the Louvre study anticipates the present one seems very plausible. Our drawing reveals Naldini's more pictorial qualities in the quick and dramatic use of ink and wash on the attractive washed paper.