[Santacroce], illuminator's pattern sheet for a Venetian dogale, ink & wash on paper, [Venice, early sixteenth century]

Santacroce, Girolamo da, attributed to. An illuminator’s pattern sheet for a Venetian dogale, featuring the Lion of St. Mark (top), the figures of Madonna and Child (left), and the Risen Christ (right), with an empty cartouche for a coat of arms (bottom), the four corners filled with classical motifs, garlands of fruit and leaves. Venice, ca. 1525–1550)

A pattern sheet for the frontispiece of a Venetian dogale (see lot 30), presumably intended to be shown to a patron for approval before the artist began to paint the finished work. Sketches of this type for manuscripts and books—made after the artist had refined his ideas for the composition, functioning as a sort of contract between the artist and the patron, about what the design will look like—are very rare, and we trace none made specifically for a dogale. A similar sheet in the Morgan Library & Museum (1979.13) with a blank center and blank cartouche for a coat of arms, made in Italy ca. 1480–1490 for a manuscript or a printed book, is described by Jonathan Alexander as “a very unusual survival” (The Painted Page, pp. 211–212, no. 207).

By the first quarter of the sixteenth century it had become customary for Venetian patricians elected to high office to commission a copy of the official document recording the rules, oaths and obligations of office, enlisting, in turn, the services of a scribe, illuminator, and bookbinder to create a bespoke luxury object, a tangible representation of their civic virtue and piety. The codices usually contained one or two illuminated pages depicting the office-holder, the Virgin Mary or St Mark, or other patron saints, personifications of Venice, Justice and/or Fame.

Those involved in illuminating dogali were for the most part professional miniaturists; however, as the century progressed increasing numbers of ordinary painters came to be involved. The present sheet was attributed in the past to the painters Giovanni da Udine (Sotheby’s 1885) and Girolamo Mocetto (Schab 1965), but most recently to Girolamo da Santacroce (Sotheby’s 1998, Les Enluminures 1999), a Bergamasque painter working mostly in Venice (1480/1485–1556), trained in the workshops of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. A few contract drawings are attributed to Santacroce (for a processional banner, British Museum, 1900,0717.32; for an altarpiece, Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, RP-T-1965-314[R]); however, he remains “a fairly unknown quantity as a draughtsman” (Hugo Chapman, British Museum Collections Database). Decorative elements of the present drawing may derive from prints by Zoan Andrea or Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, produced in Venice around 1507–1516, representing all’antica grotesques of very similar style.

Drawing (225 x 157 mm), brown ink heightened with wash on paper, ruled into eight rectangles around the edges of a blank central compartment (127 x 71 mm), the verso blank. (Slight tear in the center, laid down on old paper.)

provenance: August Grahl (1791–1868; ink-stamp [Lugt 1199]; Sotheby Wilkinson & Hodge, London, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings by the Old Masters formed by the late Professor August Grahl of Dresden, 27–28 April 1885, lot 322), purchased by — unidentified owner (£1 5s) — William H. Schab, New York (Catalogue 33, [1962?], item 156, $300), purchased in 1965 by — Mark Lansburgh (1925–2013; Sotheby’s, London, Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, 1 December 1998, lot 53 (£3220). — Les Enluminures, Paris (Catalogue 8: La symbolique et le monde médiéval, [1999], item 41). acquisition: Purchased from Les Enluminures (Sandra Hindman), Chicago, 1999. 

references: see Helena Katalin Szépe, Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts (New Haven, 2018).