Baccio Bandinelli

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), London (L.2364);

Etienne Desperet (1804-1865), Paris (L.721);

sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 7 June 1865, part of lot 12 (21 fr to Clément for Paravey),

Charles Paravey (1801-1877), Paris,

his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 13 April 1878, lot 136 (as École florentine, 32 fr to Calando), 

Eugène Calando (d. before 1899), Paris (L.837),

thence by inheritance to his son, Eugène Calando, Paris (d. 1953) (L.426b; his inventory: 2018. Donatello. Sujet religieux : le Christ au tombeau, de chaque côté une figure d'ange portant flambeau, au milieu la Vierge et au-dessus un personnage sur nuage ? À la Plume. 25 x 32 cm. Collections : Sir J. Reynolds (gauche) + Desperet (droite), no 12, att. à Bandinelli ?),

by whom sold to Cl. Catroux in 1949;

Michel Gaud, Paris;

with Trinity Fine Art, London, Old Master Drawings and European Works of Art, 1994, no. 5;

Private collection;

sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 July 2001, lot 45;

with Artemis Fine Arts - C. G. Boerner Inc., New York, Old Master Drawings, 2002, no. 1,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 4 (entry by Rhoda Eitel-Porter);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 4

The present work, executed by Bandinelli in his characteristic pen and brown ink, depicts The Pietà, a subject that the artist treated in both drawings and sculptures on numerous occasions throughout his career. The Nixon drawing shows the mourning Virgin standing behind the body of Christ, the two figures flanked by two standing Angels bearing torches, while a third angel, accompanied by two putti, swings a censer from above.

Another drawing by Bandinelli in the collection of the Musée du Louvre, Paris, depicting The Dead Christ Presented to the People, can be closely compared to the present work, both on stylistic grounds and as regards subject-matter.¹ It has been tentatively suggested by Rhoda Eitel-Porter (see Exhibited) that the Louvre drawing may constitute an alternative design for the same project as the Nixon sheet. Given that they do not obviously appear to be designs for a three-dimensional sculpture, one possibility is that these two drawings served instead as studies for a relief. We know from the great chronicler of the Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari, that Bandinelli’s father, the goldsmith Michelangelo di Viviano de’Brandini, was commissioned to produce a very large silver cross, based on his son’s wax models, for the church of Santa Maria del Fiore. The cross was to be studded in low relief with scenes from the Passion of Christ, lending the possibility that the Nixon and Louvre drawings may have been preparatory drawings for this unfinished project.² Janet Cox-Rearick suggests, however, that these two designs instead relate to a different project, a large painted Lamentation intended for Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, in Cestello.³ Although that altarpiece was never realized, Vasari described Bandinelli as having made “a very beautiful cartoon containing a Dead Christ surrounded by the Marys, with Nicodemus and other figures”,⁴ a description that corresponds particularly well with the Louvre drawing.

For another exceptional example of Bandinelli’s draftsmanship from the Nixon collection, see lot 8.

^1.Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. 117

^2.G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori scultori ed architettori…., 2nd. ed., Florence 1568, vol. II, p. 281

^3.J. Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio, Berkeley 1993, pp. 176-177

4.Vasari, op. cit., p. 277