Domenico Robusti, called Domenico Tintoretto

Luigi Grassi (L.1171b);
acquired by Frits Lugt in 1923;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 13 May 1924, part of lot 134 (as Jacopo Tintoretto);
Robert Lehman, New York;
Hans Calmann, London;
sale, London, Christie's, 29 November 1977, lot 40 (as Jacopo Tintoretto)

Hans Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters, New York 1970, vol. I, in no. 1535;
James Byam Shaw, The Italian Drawings of the Lugt Collection, Paris 1983, vol. I, p. 247, under no. 242, note 3;
Jacob Bean and Lawrence Turcic, 15th and 16th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1982, p. 242, under no. 247;
A. Forlani Tempesti, The Robert Lehman Collection, Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Drawings, New York 1991, p. 137; p. 139, reproduced fig. 45.4; p. 140, note 7

Laid down. Overall in good condition. There are slight marks in each of the four corners where it is apparent that the sheet has been glued down and there are several creases in the paper mainly concentrated at the left margin. There are a few brown stains, one more apparent at the top margin near the figure's head. The medium remains fresh.
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This was once part of a group of sheets that included studies of recumbent and seated women, all drawn in black and white chalk on blue paper, with similar dimensions.  At least thirteen of these drawings, including the present example, were in the collection of Luigi Grassi in 1923.  In that year Frits Lugt acquired the group from Grassi.  He sold one to the Albertina and kept one which is still in the Lugt Collection. Subsequently the remaining eleven were sold at Sotheby's in 1924 and acquired soon after by Robert Lehman, still as Jacopo Tintoretto.  Lehman gave one of the drawings to the Metropolitan Museum in 1941, and seems to have given away two others, one of which is the present lot.

In 1944 Tietze and Tietze Conrat attributed the drawings to Domenico, and this change has been generally accepted.  Support for this shift in attribution was provided by Rosanna Tozzi's well-researched argument that ninety oil sketches in an album in the British Museum, previously ascribed to Jacopo, are in fact by Domenico.¹  Although executed in oil, these sketches share strong stylistic similarities with the group of recumbent and seated drawn figures.  Forlani Tempesti writes of the chalk studies: 'Domenico's nudes are truer to life [than Jacopo's], however, and attest to his ability to capture the human form in realistic, abandoned poses, often daring in their immediacy, and to suggest a setting with little more than the play of light and shadow against the blue tone of the paper.' ²  She believes they are probably late works, after 1600, and that some can be related to figures in paintings.

1.  Rosanna Tozzi, 'Disegni di Domenico Tintoretto', Bollettino d'arte, series 3, 31, no. 31, 1937, pp. 19-31

2.  A. Forlani Tempesti, op. cit., p. 137-8