Paolo di Bernardino d’Antonio, called Fra Paolino

L. Zentai, 'Quelques remarques sur un (deux) dessin(s) de Fra Bartolommeo', Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts, 88-89, 1998, p. 104 and note 12, reproduced p. 100, fig. 45 (as Atelier de Fra Bartolommeo);
C. Fischer, in Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the Renaissance in Florence, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2005, p. 101 and p. 337, under no. 18, note 1

 

Possibly removed from old backing sheet. The drawing is stronger and the paper a little warmer than appears in the catalogue illustration. There are areas of damage, a patch at the upper centre, an area across the figure's left shoulder and across the cross, and another on the lower hand. All have been made up. A small horizontal tear at the lower right edge. Overall the paper is rather yellowed, and there are some brown stains at the upper part of the verso, although they are not really visible on the recto. The chalk, however, is still quite strong. Unframed.
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This illuminating drawing bears witness to the great debt the pupils of Fra Bartolommeo, and in this case specifically Fra Paolino, owed to their master.  According to Chris Fischer, who has given his opinion from a photograph, this study is the work of Fra Paolino, and is closely linked to two known drawings by Fra Bartolommeo, representing the same kneeling Dominican friar, probably St. Thomas Aquinas.  One of the two drawings in question is in Berlin,¹ the other is the left half of a sheet of studies in Budapest.²  
 
This drawing is most probably preparatory for Fra Paolino's altarpiece of The Crucifixion in San Domenico, Pistoia,³ although the kneeling friar is in reverse to the painting. Chris Fischer suggests that the drawing can be dated around the early 1530s, the period to which the Pistoia altarpiece is usually assigned. The studies of hands to the left in the present drawing (which do not appear in the two studies by Fra Bartolommeo) are closely related to the hands of the crucified Christ in the Pistoia altarpiece. Chris Fischer has also noted that the exaggeratedly small hands of our friar are characteristic of Fra Paolino, and are very comparable, for instance, to the hands of the Madonna in his drawing Madonna and Child (Rome, Farnesina, inv. no. FC.124172). A further study, which appears to be a copy of the friar in the present sheet, was sold Lucerne, Gilhofer & Ranschburg, 28 June 1934, lot 21.  Reproduced in Zentai's article, fig. 44, it seems much weaker, and the draperies are less well understood.

Fra Paolino was the son of the painter Bernardino del Signoraccio.  We do not know when he joined the Dominican order, nor when he started his training with Fra Bartolommeo, but when the master died in 1517 Fra Paolino inherited his bottega.  This is a very interesting addition to the corpus of drawings given to Fra Paolino, which is mainly limited to studies of the Madonna and Child executed, like the present drawing, in black chalk heightened with white chalk.⁴

1.  Kupferstichkabinet, inv.no. KdZ 482; see Zentai, op. cit., p. 100, fig. 46

2.  Szépmüvézeti Múzeum, inv. no. 1766; see Fischer, loc. cit.

3.  A. Venturi, Storia dell'Arte Italiana, La Pittura del Cinquecento, Milan 1925, vol. IX, part 1, p. 390, fig. 282

4.  See for example C. Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo et son atelier, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1994-95, pp. 140-144, reproduced