Agostino Carracci

John Winter
Dr. Michel Gaud
Sold: Sotheby's Monaco, June 20, 1987, lot 63
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, The Achievement of a Connoisseur, Philip Pouncey, 1985, no. 11, reproduced

Daniele Benati et al., Disegni Emiliani del Sei-Settecento: Quadri da stanza e da altare, Milan, 1991, p. 34, reproduced p. 38, no. 7.4

Laid down. Light vertical creasing down centre. Various repaired tears towards edges. Some slight surface rubbing, but general condition very good and strong. Sold in a fine carved and gilded frame.
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A striking drawing by Agostino, this beautifully finished study, squared for transfer, was first attributed to the artist by Philip Pouncey, who recognized it as a full-size modello for a small painting, executed on copper, now in the Pinacoteca, Ferrara (fig. 1).  The painting was originally inserted, together with another, The Gathering of the Manna, traditionally attributed to Lodovico , in a wooden tabernacle, or ciborium, on the high altar of the Ferrarese church of San Cristoforo alla Certosa (D. Benati [loc. cit.] has suggested that the copper paintings were executed by assistants).  This high altar (badly damaged at the beginning of the 19th century) was built in 1596, and consecrated in around 1597, providing the terminus ante quem for the execution of the present drawing.  The dating of the present sheet to the mid-1590s is further supported by the date of 1595 that is inscribed on the preparatory drawing by Lodovico for The Gathering of the Manna, discovered by Mary Newcome and now in the Galleria di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa (fig. 2, Genoa, Palazzo Rosso, inv. no. D1232; B. Bohn, Ludovico Carracci and the Art of Drawing, Turnhout, 2004, p. 252, no. 121).  

The composition of this fine drawing by Agostino corresponds reasonably closely to its painted counterpart, although there are several significant differences.  The format of the drawing is somewhat squarer than that of the copper painting, in which a number of motifs are omitted, both in the background and in the foreground.  In the drawing, behind the crowded scene around the table we see two extra figures to the sides, a man with a chalice on the left and a servant carrying a dish on the right, neither of whom appear in the painting.  Also omitted from the painting are the dog and two cats that Agostino originally drew in the foreground, on a tiled floor that gave more space in front of the central scene, balancing the pure geometry of the architectural setting in the background.  Overall, the reduced composition of the painted version is less interesting and balanced.  Perhaps the format was altered to its final shape after the presentation of this finished modello, to suit better the location for which the painting was destined. Interestingly, the drawing by Lodovico for the second copper panel in the same ciborium also seems not to correspond exactly to its painted counterpart in terms of dimensions – its format is similar, but it is slightly larger in both directions – so perhaps the measurements of the proposed tabernacle were changed after Agostino and Lodovico received the commission. 

Beautifully drawn in Agostino’s preferred media – pen and ink and wash, over a visible under-drawing in black chalk – the present sheet is a very rare example of a finished modello by the artist.  It encapsulates Agostino’s great ability in constructing his typical classical and symmetrical compositions, which are animated through the contrasting, fluid use of the pen in the detailed and elaborate description of the individual figures.  This pen-work is enriched with abundant wash and enlivened by the white heightening, which creates a wonderful and powerful source of light.  In the Taubman drawing, as in a number of others, Agostino’s draughtsmanship betrays a strong Venetian influence, and especially a debt to Tintoretto, which is particularly apparent in figures such as the one on the far right in the foreground, or that of Judas, who sits nearby on a stool, bending to take a piece of bread. In the years preceding this commission Agostino had visited Venice several times, and this debt to Venetian masters is strongly visible in a canvas of the same subject, now in the Prado, which some scholars date to a similar period in the 1590s, but Benati believes, with good stylistic justification, to have been painted just after Agostino’s return from Venice in 1589.  This large painting has a similar, though not identical, composition to the later small copper, and the present modello for it (Benati, loc. cit.).  Benati published three sheets of figure studies connected with the Prado composition, two of which Agostino reused in the present drawing: a study for the seated apostle to the far left, and for the one seated on the stool in the foreground (Judas)(Respectively: Madrid, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, inv. no. 509 (recto and verso), Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, inv. 76.134;  reproduced Benati, op. cit., pp. 36-37,  7.1, 7.3). A very quick compositional sketch by Agostino for a Last Supper, most probably also related to this same composition, is in the National Gallery, Oslo (inv. no. 15395).

The Carracci – the brothers Agostino and Annibale (1560-1609), and their cousin Lodovico (1555-1619) – worked together very much as a team until the early 1590s, and as their fame spread beyond their native city of Bologna, they began to receive prestigious commissions from important patrons from neighbouring states, until their collaborative business was restructured by the departure of Agostino and Annibale to Rome.  One of the first and most illustrious of these commissions came in 1592 from Cesare d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who commissioned a ceiling to be installed in the Camera del Poggiolo, in the Palazzo dei Diamanti.  The fundamental reform of the process of painting that the Carracci initiated, particularly through their strikingly new approach to the art of drawing and its use within the creative process, had a profound impact on the subsequent evolution of art not only in Italy but throughout Europe.