Bartolomeo Schedoni

With Yvonne Tan Bunzl, London, 1994,
bears unidentified collector's mark, verso (not in Lugt)

Window mounted on a sheet of paper. There is some very minor surface dirt to the extremities and an old hanging line to the centre of the sheet. The red chalk medium remains fresh throughout.
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The attribution of this sensitive drawing to Schedoni was first proposed prior to the work's being exhibited in 1994 (see Provenance), by scholars including Dwight Miller and Sir Denis Mahon.  Miller noted that the sentiment that informs the drawing is typical of the artist, and that the same awkwardness in the depiction of the leg is found in the well-known sheet of a Young Boy standing, at Chatsworth.¹

Described by the celebrated 18th-Century French collector, Pierre-Jean Mariette, as 'fort rares,'² an assertion that remains true today, the known chalk drawings by the artist tend to be characterized by a distinctive use, as seen here, of parallel hatching,³ a technique that Schedoni employed to great effect to create a sense of modeling in the figures he portrayed.

Miller has further described Schedoni's work as 'surely among the most impressive manifestations of the legacy of Correggio in Parma and the Carracci reform movement in Bologna'.  In fact, the artist's drawings, always of a very high quality, are a subtle blend of these influences, creating a style of his own that had a great influence on the following generation of painters and draughtsmen in Bologna.  

^1. M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings, Bolognese and Emilian Schools, London 1994, p. 280, no. 726, reproduced

^2. P.-J. Mariette, Description Sommaire des Dessins des Grands Mâitres du Cabinet Feu M. Crozat, Paris 1741, p. 40

^3. D. Miller, 'The Drawings of Bartolomeo Schedoni; toward a Firmer Definition of his Drawing Style and its Chronology', Master Drawings, vol. XXIII, No. 1 (1986), p. 38