Workshop of Filippino Lippi

Eugène Rodrigues, Paris (1853-1928) (L.897);
with Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, their label pasted on the backing of the frame:
'99. Study of a Youth Reading a Book. Filippino Lippi';
Private Collection

Hinged at the side with two hinges. Overall good condition. A few small round grey stains in the upper part of the sheet: one on the sleeve and another to the left toward the margin. Some staining towards the top end of the right margin and corner. Three lighter small round stains, not very visible: one on the pages of the book and two in the area around. Some of these stains are visible more form the back where the damage has occurred. Media and color of the prepared paper still strong. Some surface dirt. Sold mounted and in a modern gilded frame.
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Never before published, this is a wonderful example of the type of ‘studio dal modello’, drawn in silverpoint heightened with white, that was more or less invented in the workshop of Filippino Lippi in the last quarter of the 15^th century.  Filippino, with his exceptional skill in the use of silverpoint and his control of the stylus, introduced a new way of using this traditional medium to make studies from live models, handled with very quick and vivacious strokes, which are much closer to the effects more usually achieved at the time through the use of pen and ink, and so admired in the vigorous penmanship of artists such as Pollaiuolo.  Many important Florentine painters of this period, including Botticelli and Leonardo, shared Filippino’s enthusiasm for the use of metalpoint when studying from life.  The survival of a relatively large number of drawings 'dal modello’ by Filippino and his workshop bears witness to the importance of this practice in his bottega and more widely among Florentine painters, and though this technique was replaced quickly at the beginning of the following century by easier and more practical media, not requiring the same confidence and precision, the tradition of metalpoint has left us these highly attractive and fascinating sheets, executed on strongly coloured prepared paper, generally with different nuances of pink, blue or grey, heightened with abundant and highly pictorial white heightening.   

Clearly very rapidly sketched in silverpoint, the present drawing is a study of a seated garzone reading, holding an open book with both hands, seen almost in profile, wearing a hat and enveloped in a heavily draped cloth.  The paper is prepared with an orange-pink ground, both on the recto and on the verso.  The initial drawing in silverpoint has been embellished and enriched by the handling of the white heightening, which emphasizes the pictorial and luminous quality of the sheet.  The broad and fluent handling of the white bodycolour is very characteristic of Filippino and his entourage, and of similar studies datable to the 1480s.¹  The monumental, sculptural effect created by the strongly contrasting white is another distinctive feature of these studies, guaranteeing their visual impact, and also enhancing the visibility of the much more delicate metalpoint lines.  To create highlights in this way, purely with broad areas of white, rather than by building them up with individual hatched strokes in silverpoint, was a very progressive technique for its time.

Two drawings by Filippino Lippi in the collection of the British Museum also include books as a prominent motif: the first is a study of two naked models, one reading a book; the other is a double-sided sheet, supposedly from a sketchbook of circa 1482-3, showing on the recto a seated man resting his right foot on books, and on the verso a standing man holding an open book.²

Such innovative studies in silverpoint, now mostly preserved in public collections and rare to come on the market, were made both as practice, to help young artists to master their skills, and to record a repertory of poses that could be kept in the bottega for inspiration and future use in narrative painted compositions.

^1. The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998, nos. 22-42, reproduced

^2. London, British Museum, inv. nos. 1858-7-24-4, 1895-9-15-454; A.E. Popham and Philip Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the department of Prints and drawings in the British Museum, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, London 1950, vol. I, p. 82, no. 134, and p. 83, no. 136, reproduced vol. II, pls. CXXII, CXXIV, CXXV