拍品 13
  • 13

WORKSHOP OF PERUGINO | An Angel

估價
100,000 - 150,000 GBP
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描述

  • An Angel
  • Pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk, within brown ink framing lines 
  • 237 by 186mm

來源

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), London (L.2364);
Thomas Blayds (L.416a, as marque non identifiée);
Samuel Jones Loyd, later 1st Baron Overstone (1796-1883),
thence by inheritance to his son-in-law, Brigadier-General Robert Loyd-Lindsay, 1st Baron Wantage, VC, KCB, VD (1832-1901), Lockinge, Oxfordshire,
thence by descent to the present owner

展覽

Torgiano, Museo del Vino, Fondazione Longarotti, Dal Disegno all'Opera compiuta, 1987, p. 20, no. 1 (as Cerchia di Pietro Vannucci, detto il Perugino; entry by Francis Russell), ill. p. 21

出版

G. Redford, Descriptive Catalogue of Works of Art at Overstone Park, Lockinge House and Carlton Gardens, 1878, p. 24, no. 19;
Guide to the Pictures at Lockinge House (A.T. Loyd's Collection), 1928, p. 29;
The Loyd Collection of Paintings and Drawings at Betterton House, Lockinge near Wantage, Berkshire, London 1967, no. 112 (as Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino);
F. Russell, 'Perugino and the Early Experience of Raphael', in Raphael before Rome, Washington, 1986, p. 191, fig. 2 (as Pupil of Perugino);
F. Russell, The Loyd Collection of Paintings, Drawings and Sculptures, 1991 (revised edition), no. 112 (as Attributed to Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael)

Condition

Laid down at the four corners to an old album page, the sheet remains otherwise free and unbacked. There is some very minor scattered foxing and some minor surface dirt to the extremities of the sheet. There is a small nick to the right half of the upper edge and what appears to be a small repaired tear to the lower half of the right edge beneath the angel's left foot. The drawing remains in otherwise remarkably good, original condition with the pen and ink medium fresh and vibrant throughout and the image strong. Sold in a giltwood frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

拍品資料及來源

Large, finished Italian Renaissance figure studies of this kind have always been greatly appreciated by collectors, sometimes more, even, than rapidly drawn initial compositional studies, but drawings of this type are nonetheless extremely rare, especially in such an exceptional state of preservation, and hardly ever come on the market. The Loyd drawing, representing an Angel walking to the left, his hands joined in prayer, is a quintessentially Peruginesque image, and corresponds to a figure found in a number of Perugino's painted works, the earliest of which is the lunette of the high altarpiece of the Ascension, commissioned in the mid-1490s for the church of San Pietro in Perugia, and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.1  The same angel subsequently reappears in a number of other works by Perugino, notably in the upper section of the important and celebrated fresco of God the Father, flanked by Angels, with Prophets and Sibyls, one of six lunette-shaped scenes commissioned in 1496 as part of the decorations of the audience chamber of the Collegio del Cambio, Perugia (fig. 1).   Renaissance artists frequently copied themselves and reused their own models, and members of any bottega also routinely copied from the master's drawings and painted works.  Vasari in fact specifically complained about this practice in connection with Perugino, writing, in his life of the artist, that Perugino often placed exactly the same details in different pictures, thereby losing spontaneity.2  

Beautifully drawn with a delicate and elegant use of the pen, the study is executed over a preliminary black chalk underdrawing, faintly visible in places.  The hatching is precise and oblique, with areas of cross-hatchings, while the rhythmic lines indicating the folds of the drapery display an abundance of the characteristic Peruginesque ‘occhiellature’ (hooked ends).  The figure is bathed in light, falling to the left, which sculpts the elaborately described drapery in which it is swathed.  As an image, the drawing seems to focus on conveying the harmonious equilibrium of the praying angel, emphasising at the same time his idealized beauty and the intimacy of his devotion. 

A fascinating and rare sheet, this drawing is closely linked with Perugino’s graphic style, and was most likely inspired by a drawn prototype by the master.  In the past, it has been attributed to a range of different artists, from Perugino himself, through various named and anonymous members of his workshop, to the young Raphael. 

In 1927, A.M. Hind, Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, wrote on the mount in pencil: ‘same hand as BM Pp. 1-29’.  This inscription, still visible on the mount, refers to the inventory number of a study in the British Museum, An Angel playing a viol,which corresponds almost exactly with another angel in Perugino’s Ascension, in Lyon, to which the Loyd drawing also relates.  Popham and Pouncey, in their later catalogue entry for the British Museum drawing, observed: 'It is one of a number of copies in the same elaborate style of pen-drawings, no doubt produced in Perugino’s workshop, perhaps from a drawing by him.’4  In style, technique and size, the British Museum drawing is indeed very close to the present sheet.  More recently, Francis Russell proposed an attribution to the young Raphael (see Exhibited), suggesting the drawing could have been made around 1496, when Raphael would have been just thirteen years old, and greatly under the influence of Perugino, in whose workshop Vasari says he trained.  Subsequently, in the privately published 1991 catalogue of the Loyd collection (see Literature), Russell writes that in 1972 James Byam Shaw endorsed a tentative attribution to Raphael, while Sylvia Ferrino Pagden suggested the name of Giovanni di Pietro, called lo Spagna (c. 1450-1528), and Konrad Oberhuber considered the drawing to be by Pietro Perugino (c. 1446-1523) himself. 

Perugino created a wholly new style of painting, and the rapid spread of his idiom throughout Italy ensured his artistic reputation, in his own time and long after.  Copying was a significant element of Renaissance workshop practice, in which the young artists and collaborators of a master learned through imitation.  Drawings were kept in the bottega to be replicated, reused and adapted to different purposes, according to changing needs and commissions received.  This approach to the use and replication of drawings was a vital element in the process of spreading and popularizing the Peruginesque style, of which the exceptional and very rare Loyd Collection drawing is so emblematic. 

The distinguished provenance of this drawing can be traced back to the famous English artist-collector Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792).  It appears to have been acquired for the Loyd collection during the 1840s, when Samuel Jones Loyd, later Lord Overstone, is believed to have purchased en bloc the drawings collection of Thomas Blayds of Englefield Green, who had formed a large collection of Italian drawings during his sojourn in Italy.  (See also the following lot.) 

1. P. Scarsellini, Perugino, Milan 1984, p. 94, no. 75, reproduced p. 203, fig. 127

2. G. Vasari, Le Vite de più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori ed Architettori,ed. G. Milanesi, Florence 1878, vol. III, p. 585

3. London, British Museum, inv. no. Pp. 1-29 (as 'After Pietro Perugino')

4. A.E. Popham and P. Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,London 1950, vol. I, pp. 120-121, reproduced vol. II, pl. CLXXVII, fig. 197