Old Master Drawings1465 to 1670

Les enLuminures

Exhibition:

January 20th to 28th, 2017

Les enLuminures

23 East 73rd Street • 7th FloorPenthouse • New York, NY 10021

Tel +1 212 717 7273 newyork@lesenluminures.com

Old Master Drawings1465 to 1670

COLLECTING OLD MASTER DRAWINGS TODAYAssembled over the past fifteen years, the thirteen Old Master drawings included in this short catalogue date from about 1465 to 1670. The drawings are geographically wide-ranging, originating in Italy, France, Germany, and the North and South Netherlands. Several manuscripts containing substantial numbers of drawings are included, for this is a medium I believe helps round out the history of drawings in the Renaissance and is often ignored. Through the variety of their technique and the multiplicity of their functions, these drawings offer a brief account of the history of drawings in the Renaissance and beyond.

Some background is useful, since an Old Master drawings catalogue issued by Les Enluminures may initially seem unexpected. In 1991, when I founded Les Enluminures and early drawings were still frequently available on the market, I originally intended to offer Old Master drawings, especially those before 1500, for sale on a regular basis; I planned to offer them along with illuminated manuscript leaves and cuttings, “vélins” (later works on parchment, and thus a category of art that seemed to me to be related to both drawings and manuscripts), and of course manuscripts. Our first catalogue issued in 1992 reflected this mixture. It included a number of early drawings and miniatures, as well as vélins extending to the seventeenth century and representing the continuity of the history of illumination. Catalogues through the 1990s, up to Catalogue 8 in 1999, continued to mirror this interest – and the availability of early drawings on the market. Following the body of this catalogue, a short section includes thumbnails and brief descriptions of selected early drawings sold (mostly to institutions) in these early years of our activity.

My fascination with the history of collecting illuminated manuscript leaves and cuttings in part fueled my interest in early drawings. I noted that many collectors of Old Master drawings often included fragments of illuminated manuscripts – both leaves and cuttings – in their collections. I speculated (in Catalogue 3) that this phenomenon was due to a desire to back-date the history of drawing, extending it to earlier periods. Crossover collectors are too many to enumerate fully here, but among those whose artworks we have handled are the hydraulics entrepreneur Baron Adalbert von Lanna (1836-1909) in Prague and Vienna, the archeologist Robert Forrer (1866-1947) in Strasbourg, the curator Philip Hofer (1898-1984) in Cambridge, the art historian Walter Hugelshofer (1899-1987) in Zurich, and the architect-developer Ian Woodner (1903-1990) in New York. Other well-known examples include the financiers Robert Lehman (1891-1969) and J. P. Morgan (1837-1913) and art historians Lord Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) and Sir John Pope-Hennessey (1913-1934). Among collectors represented in this catalogue who cross-collected, there are Eugene Rodrigues (no. 1), Jan Krugier (nos. 4, 6, and 10), and Robert Staynor Holford (no. 13). Drawings have in the past thus shared prestigious provenances, and, inevitably, display and storage, with miniatures. It is worth noting that many museums worldwide house miniatures with drawings in their departments of prints and drawings (this is the practice at the Art Institute of the Chicago and the Musée du Louvre, among many others).

As certain crossover collectors mentioned above must surely have done, I have previously compared drawings as works of art on paper (or parchment) to illuminated manuscript leaves and cuttings of

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the same period. However, as the drawings assembled here clearly show, the medium is quite distinct from illuminated manuscripts; miniatures are highly finished tempera paintings executed over underdrawings and related to the accompanying text.

Remarks by the collector-artist-writer Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) are often cited on the significance of Renaissance drawing, which he considered the father and foundation of all forms of artistic endeavor or the “animating principle of all creative processes.” Scholars studying medieval and even early Renaissance drawing have taken issue with Vasari’s perspective, considering it more typical of the High Renaissance and less applicable to drawing at earlier moments in time (e.g., see especially Holcomb 2009). This catalogue permits us to flesh out a diverse pre-Vasarian overview of Old Master drawings.

The drawings in this catalogue include a wide variety of media, and they show notable shifts in technique over two centuries. Paper is the support for all the drawings in this catalogue, although parchment was used during the late Gothic era; in some examples prepared paper or colored paper is employed (e.g., nos. 4, 6, and 9). Pen and ink with occasional brushwork applying watercolor wash characterizes the earliest drawings (e.g., nos. 1 and 2). In later drawings, the use of chalk (no. 6, 11) and then graphite (no. 12 and 13) enriches the range of textures artists were able to convey. Highlighting with white, present in two of our examples, also significantly enhances the texture of the finished product (nos. 9 and 10). The drawings in this catalogue fit into three basic categories: copy drawings (nos. 1 and 2), sketches for eventual compositions (no. 5), and fully worked out compositions (no. 3 is probably a fragment of such). One drawing is traced for transfer (no. 10), but others may relate in different ways, some still to be discovered, to finished compositions (nos. 9 and 13). Brief remarks in the short descriptions suggest how each example fits within the general overview we have constructed.

In nearly every generation, art dealers and collectors alike lament the shrinking availability of “old” art on the market. Availability is, of course, a relative phenomenon and one that is dependent on all sorts of factors. In the case of Old Master drawings, however, we can say with some assurance that opportunities to purchase drawings before 1500 are extremely limited, and even drawings before 1600 have become scarce on the art market. Most of today’s private collectors of drawings therefore begin their collections – of necessity – with examples from the seventeenth, or sometimes the late sixteenth, centuries. Crossover collecting is a thing of the past. I imagine this is true not only because it is so difficult to obtain early drawings, but also because for collectors today the gap in time between medieval miniatures and later drawings, say of the seventeenth century, is too great, and it therefore makes less sense to attempt to establish a continuity between them. Nevertheless, there remains much to be learned from early drawings, and because of their increasing rarity, as well as intrinsic artistic interest, every example merits close attention and further study. Here is an uncommon opportunity for private collectors and institutions alike to acquire an Old Master drawing that documents an early moment in the history of drawing.

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GERMAN SCHOOL Adoration of the Magi (200 x 282 mm.)Germany, Swabia or Franconia, c. 1465-70

Pen and brown ink on paper (watermark bull’s head, Piccard 65642, Ulm, 1462), some foxing, small tear in lower right corner, in excellent condition, on the reverse written in pencil “Filigrane à la téte de bœuf.”

PROVENANCE: Jean Gigoux (Besançon 6 January 1806-Paris 11 December 1894), painter, lithographer, illustrator, and collector, his collector’s mark lower left corner (Lugt 1164); Eugene Rodrigues (Paris 1853-1928), lawyer and collector of northern drawings, his collector’s mark in the lower left corner (Lugt 897), his sale, Amsterdam, Frederick Muller & Cie, 12-13 July 1921, lot 130, reproduced pl. L (as Netherlandish School, 15th Century, to M. von Weber); [Hochon according to the Rodrigues sale catalogue]; Sotheby’s, New York, 25 January 2012, lot 29.

Of the nearly 3,000 extant German drawings of the fifteenth century, the majority are copy- drawings, like this one, composed by apprentices as exercises or used by journeymen as models.

Previous sale catalogues classified this drawing as fifteenth-century Netherlandish, close to the work of Dirk Bouts. Compositional details, including the presence of the round table, as well as the prominent placement and the specific gestures of Joseph, who tips his pointed hat with one hand as he extends the other hand toward one of the Magi to receive the gift, draw closely on Netherlandish examples, such as an altarpiece by Dirk Bouts (Friedländer, 3, pl. 24). A drawing now in Erlangen, which is unusually large like the present one, presents a similar composition and is attributed to the circle of Dirk Bouts or to Cologne (Buck and Messling, 2010, no. 138).

New expertise suggests that this drawing actually preserves a copy of a lost painting from the Pleydenwurff-Herlin circle in the latter 1460s. The watermark localizable in Ulm c. 1462 supports this date and origin. This is the period in Germany, specifically in the region of Franconia, when German art was fully assimilating Netherlandish influences. The pose of the youthful kneeling king, along with those of the Virgin and Child, is compositionally close to a painting ascribed to Bamberg (Stange, vol. 7, 1958, no. 65). Details of the composition, as well as execution, are found in works by Hans Pleydenwurff (c. 1420-1472), after he moved to Nuremberg around 1460 (Stange, vol. 9, 1958, no. 199; Suckale 2009, vol. 2, p. 12); Hans Schüchlin (1440-1505) of Ulm (cf. Washington D. C., National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, Inv. no. 1998.33.1); and Friedrich Herlin (c. 1425/30-1500), active in Nördlingen (Swabia). Compositional particularities, such as the three Magi arriving one after another, are found in the work of Herlin (cf. Karlsruhe, Kunsthalle, Inv. nos. 2262a and 2262b, and drawings at the Rottenburg Diözesanmuseum and Sarnen Kollegium).

We are grateful to Fritz Koreny for his expertise.

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2 GERMAN SCHOOL St. John the Evangelist (189 x 100 mm.)Upper Rhine, c. 1480-90 Pen and black and black-brown ink on paper over preparatory drawing executed with charcoal and chalk, washes with brush in grey and ochre; yellow tint in the hair and the borders of the garment (particularly its sleeve and hem), and the lips, cheeks, and eyelids accentuated with red. Removed from a previous support, the drawing bears residue of Gothic script, suggesting that it was once pasted into in a manuscript. Written in pencil on the mount: “Mt. des Lieferinges Altars.”

PROVENANCE: I[ohan] Q[urijn] van Regteren Altena (1899-1980), a distinguished art historian and former head of the Prints and Drawings Department at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; collector’s mark on verso (Lugt 4617); his sale Christie’s, Amsterdam, 13 May 2015, lot 93.

This monochrome drawing may be a copy-drawing like the previous example. However, the artist has skillfully applied colored accents and monochrome washes, which is rare in copy-drawings; they occur in select examples from Bavaria, Swabia, Alsace, and the region of Lake Constance. Hand-colored drawings and early prints were often inserted in manuscripts in the century after Gutenberg.

This delicate drawing of St. John the Evangelist, probably from a Crucifixion, copies a lost original similar to the engraving of the Crucifixion by the anonymous copper engraver known as the Master E.S. (Lehrs 44). Active in the Middle Rhine from the middle of the fifteenth century to around 1467, the Master E.S. was one of the most important and productive copper engravers of the time, developing a new technique introduced by the slightly earlier Master of the Playing Cards. Like the latter master, he often included plant motifs in the lower zones of his compositions, as in his depictions of Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl (Lehrs 192) and St. George and the Dragon (Lehrs 144). The dense head of hair on the figure in our drawing also resembles the style of the Master E.S.

Probably working around 1485 to 1490, the draftsman responsible for St. John the Evangelist must have been inspired by an original of the 1460s. The rectilinear fold on the arm and shoulders, the regular dense folds on the lower torso, and the modeling and the plasticity of the figure conform to a manner of drawing resembling that in the Strasbourg Chronicle, dated 1492/93 (Washington, National Gallery of Art, formerly Ian Woodner Collection, f. 30, including similar plants in the foreground; see Grasselli, 1995, no. 14). The Master of the Liefering Altar, named for a work in the Church of Liefering, is from Salzburg.

We are grateful to Fritz Koreny for his expertise.

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3 UPPER RHENISH SCHOOL Madonna and Child (260 x 192 mm.)Upper Rhine, c. 1490 Two drawings on paper, one of the Madonna and Child pasted over a later drawing of an interior, the former pen and brownish-black ink, highlighted with watercolor wash in ochre, green, and red, watermark on the latter, slight stains, various notations in different 20th century hands on the verso.

PROVENANCE: Perhaps Kloster, Amorbach Cloister (Amorbach Abbey, Lower Franconia, according to a later hand-written inscription on verso); Private Collection HB [Berlin], collector’s mark in red on verso of board (Lugt 3499?); Essen, Professor Peter Kroeker, 1950s; Gallerie Arnoldi-Livie, Munich.

Cut out from a larger composition, this highly finished drawing of the Virgin and Child – skill-fully drawn freehand (not traced) with pen and highlighted with dense watercolor wash – was probably executed as an independent work in its own right.

The drawing unites two iconographic traditions. The first, the standing Christ Child in the lap of the seated Madonna dressed in ordinary clothes, relies on an Upper Rhenish model of the Virgin of Humility from the third quarter of the fifteenth century (Lehrs 69). The standing Christ Child in a similar twisting pose occurs also in the Large Einsiedeln Madonna by the Master E.S. of 1466 (Lehrs 81 and 82). The second, the Nursing Virgin (or Madonna Lactans), depicts the Virgin interrupted in the act of nursing as she squirts milk at Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who kneels praying by her side (an event that allegedly took place at Speyer Cathedral in 1146 and that gained popularity as a symbol of the wisdom imparted by the Virgin’s milk to the Saint). In our drawing, both the gesture of the Christ Child who stretches out his left hand and the Madonna’s grasp of her breast to squeeze the milk suggest that the image of Saint Bernard once occupied the right side of the composition and was later removed (compare Israhel van Meckenem, Lehrs 210-212).

Where the drawing was made deserves further study. Detailed notes in pencil on the reverse record Friedrich Winkler’s expertise with the date c. 1485 and the observation that the drawing originated in the Amorbach Abbey, in Odenwald, based on the origin of another drawing in a South German private collection. We have been unable to verify these remarks. In spite of the contemporary watermark, it seems reasonable that the drawing of the interior of the room, onto which the cut-out drawing is pasted (showing a double window, the throne on which the Virgin sits, and a succession of rooms in the rear left), was executed later, as Dr. Koreny suggests.

We are grateful to Fritz Koreny for his expertise.

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4 NORTH ITALIAN SCHOOL A Sheet from a Model Book with Four Studies of Deer and a Falcon (280 x 205 mm.)Italy, Lombardy or the Veneto, c. 1500

Pen and brush, brown ink and brown wash, heightened with brownish-yellow wash on blue prepared paper; repair of a vertical cut in upper right quadrant visible through the neck and upper torso of the deer, a few other minor repairs, some slight discoloration at the edges, no watermarks, no collector’s marks.

PROVENANCE: Sotheby’s, 13 December 2001, lot 99, purchased by the late Jan Krugier (Poland 1928-Geneva, Switzerland 2008), his sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 28 January 2015, lot 9.

This sheet demonstrates a number of elements characteristic of the late Gothic model book, which functioned to preserve images of stock forms for use by successive generations or in a workshop. The studies here depict deer and stags in various poses set on articulated grounds, a falcon perched on a stick, and antlers of various forms. The blue-tinted surface extends the tonal range that the artist was able to achieve with the use of colored washes.

The most famous examples of such model books are those by Giovannino de’ Grassi (Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, A. Mai Cassaf. 1.21) and Michelino del Besozzo (Rome, Instituto Nazionale per la Grafica, inv nos. F.N. 2833-62) (Scheller, cat. nos. 26 and 27). So preciously guarded were model books that a famous protracted lawsuit focuses on Jacquemart de Hesdin’s theft in the fourteenth century of some drawings of models from the painter Jan of Holland. Model books remained in use until the very end of the fifteenth century. Tough there can be overlap, the model book constitutes a distinct category from the sketchbook, containing drawings after nature (e.g., examples by Pisanello, Stefano da Verona, among others).

The template-like quality of the present sheet suggests that it was executed after another copy which was itself at several removes from the original. The focus on animals and birds echoes the subject matter of earlier Lombard and Venetian examples. See for example ff. 13v (falcon) and 14r in the Bergamo model book and in another anonymous Lombard example from c. 1400 which includes deer in similar poses (Venice, Galleria dell’ Accademia, sheet no. 7; Scheller, cat. no. 28).

We are grateful to Chris Fischer for his expertise.

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5 WORKSHOP OF FILIPPINO LIPPI (Prato 1487-Florence 1504) Two Figures in Ecclesiastical Robes Approaching a Seated Cardinal (?) from Behind while a Standing Boy Draws Aside a Curtain (132 x 183 mm.)Italy, Florence, c. 1490-1500 Pen and brown ink, some blue wash in upper left, on paper, notation “966” in pencil on mount, remnant of a watermark upper edge of paper; repaired at the top center, else in good condition.

PROVENANCE: William Esdale (1758-1837), London, banker and collector of prints and drawings, his collector’s mark lower left corner of recto (Lugt 2617); John Thane (1748-1818), London, dealer in prints and coins, his collector’s mark in graphite on the verso (Lugt 1544); Sotheby´s, New York, 27 January 1999, lot 3.

This sheet of sketches shows the Renaissance artist using drawing as a natural medium for experimenting with pictorial ideas, whether in preparation for a commissioned work or to work out individual figures in one or more compositions.

The lively and varied pen technique with which the movement and expressivity of the figures have been captured comes very close to Filippino Lippi´s drawing style in the last decade of the fifteenth century, as evident in both his drawings of the Nereid with Putti and the Sibyl (Goldner and Bambach, nos. 63 and 49). For a similar treatment of the hands, which are slightly awkward, compare the Dancing Putto (Goldner and Bambach, no. 84). The bristly hair of the young ecclesiastic in the center of the composition is a feature that is also found in Filippino´s drawings (e.g., Goldner and Bambach, nos. 33 and 37). One of the most gifted and accomplished Florentine painters and draftsmen of the second half of the fifteenth century, Filippino Lippi trained first with his father Fra Filippo Lippi and then in the workshop of the painter Sandro Botticelli. Well over one hundred drawings are attributed to him (Goldner and Bambach, 1997; Shoemaker, 1975), some highly finished and some energetic late studies reflecting considerable spontaneity, such as the present drawing.

The subject is a mystery. The seated clergyman might be a cardinal, but as he is wearing a biretta he could be of lower rank. It is not quite clear if this is a composition drawing for one scene or if it is in fact two separate ones; however, the format suggests that it is preparatory for a predella panel.

We are grateful to Chris Fischer and Innis Shoemaker for their expertise.

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6 NORTH ITALIAN SCHOOL Head of a Friar (49 x 48 mm.)Northern Italy, Florence or Venice, c. 1500

Black chalk, pen, brown ink, and brown wash on blue paper, laid down on card, written on verso in a eighteenth-century (?) hand “Olim/ Fra Angeli[co] da Fiesol[e].”

PROVENANCE: Statably Franz Ritter von Hauslab? (1798-1883), Vienna (Lugt 1247); Christie´s, London, 5 July 1983, lot 80; acquired there by the late Jan Krugier (Poland 1928-Geneva, Switzer-land 2008); Sotheby´s, New York, 28 January 2015, lot 11.

EXHIBITED AND PUBLISHED: Dückers, 1999, p. 413, repr.; Rylands, 1999, p. 413, repr.

This small drawing of the head of a friar is delicately rendered in pen and ink with some internal modeling in black chalk and brown wash. In his Libro dell’Arte (written in the 1390s) Cennino Cennini briefly mentions the use of chalk as a drawing material, but chalk only became an important technique in the last half of the Quattrocento. The possibilities it offered for tonal modulation of form, exploited here, are further enhanced by the use of blue paper.

The blue paper suggests a North Italian origin. This specifically Venetian type of paper was made from indigo-dyed cloths, long known as carta da straccio, inexpensive rag paper for wrapping merchandise. However, the linearity of the style is more characteristic of Florentine drafts-manship of the last decade of the fifteenth century.

It is not clear whether the drawing is a fragment or an independent study. The artist has taken considerable care with the depiction, adjusting the outlines of the face on the right, and captu-ring the introspective demeanor of the monk – his downcast eyes and solemn expression – with an economy of line.

We are grateful to Chris Fischer for his expertise.

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7 NORTH FRENCH SCHOOL Guillaume Alexis, Le Passe-temps de tout homme et de toute femme … (manuscript with 20 drawings)France, Rouen, c. 1525-1530

Illustrated manuscript on paper, 158 + v leaves, 186 x 140 mm., complete, 20 three-quarter page drawings in pen and brown ink (frontispiece hand-colored in wash, varying in size from 60-90 x 75-83 mm.), various watermarks from 1519 to 1529 (all Normandy), bound in half-pigskin over wood boards.

PROVENANCE: Copied in Normandy, likely Rouen, for an unknown patron; European Private Collection (no ex-libris or owner’s notes).

This is a hybrid work, an intriguing manuscript transcribed and illustrated entirely by hand, but based on a book printed in 1505 by the celebrated Parisian printer-publisher Antoine Vérard. Although the drawings are roughly modeled on Vérard’s woodcuts, these are not stiff copies after prints. Far from it. They are composed free-hand in an accomplished Renaissance style.

The text presents a roughly contemporary and lively verse translation by Guillaume Alexis of an immensely popular twelfth-century Latin work attributed to Pope Innocent, On the Misery of the Human Condition, also reputedly translated by Chaucer into English. There are only four recorded copies of Vérard’s edition, all illustrated with woodcuts, some hand-painted. There is some variation in the number and execution of the woodcuts, and the present manuscript is closest to the exemplar in Paris in the Bibliothèque Mazarine (Inc. 963), omitting only one of the subjects of the latter’s twenty-one woodcuts (see Hindman-Bergeron-Foote, Flowering, 2014, no. 16).

French drawings from the first half of the sixteenth century are exceedingly rare. Here is a substantial group of drawings alluring not only because of the spontaneity of their execution but also for their interesting subjects, many of which represent events from everyday life as illustrations of the Seven Deadly Sins – a sick man seated by the fire (f. 36v), courtship (f. 42v), a woman weighing gold (f. 43v), judges accepting bribes (f. 48), an unfaithful wife discovered in bed with her lover (f. 78v), and a feast at a table (f. 67v). The drawing of Narcissus admiring himself in the fountain to illustrate the sin of pride is especially fine (f. 96). We have not yet identified the draftsman of these drawings, who should probably be sought in the milieu of book illustrators in Rouen around 1530.

We are grateful to Ariane Bergeron-Foote for her expertise.

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8 GERMAN SCHOOL Schembart Carnival Book (manuscript with 86 drawings)Germany, likely Nuremberg, c. 1525-1550

Illustrated manuscript on paper, ii + 88 leaves, 310 x 205 mm., complete, 64 full-page pen and ink drawings, colored with washes, some with added gold and silver leaf, 22 smaller pen and ink drawings starting on f. 23, various watermarks, not all decipherable, bound in contemporary limp vellum.

PROVENANCE: Johannes Guilhelmus Kress a Kressenstein, his ex-libris, dated 1619, Nuremberg; ex-libris Liechtensteinianis, engraved armorial bookplate on front pastedown, their various shelfmarks in pencil on the first flyleaf; H. P. Kraus, New York, 1949, who purchased the Prince of Liechtenstein’s library; Paul and Marianne Gourary (1919-2007 and 1920-2014, respectively), New York, their book-plate beneath that of Kressenstein; Christie’s, New York, 6 June 2009, lot 209.

The controlled penwork of this manuscript’s full-page drawings is complemented by the boldly enlivened watercolor washes that delineate the extravagant costumes of the figures. The twenty-two drawings of the floats deserve special note, for they substantially enrich our understanding of South German drawing in the Augsburg-Nuremberg area in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

This witness of the famous Schembartlauf, a carnival parade held on Shrove Tuesday in Nuremberg from 1449 to 1539, includes sixty-four full-page illustrations of costumed figures, one from each year the carnival was held. Offering a history of changing dress over nearly a century, the watercolors portray the participants, richly dressed up in garments decorated with embroidery and ribbons, and often with bells that jingled as they ran through the streets. The smaller drawings depict floats that accompanied the pageants from 1479 on. Among the approximately eighty extant manuscripts, this is not only one of the earliest, but it is also one of the few to contain the drawings of the floats.

Among the drawings of floats, some are relatively schematic – an elephant and castle (f. 43v), a basilisk (f. 47), a firing canon (f. 54). Others, however, are complex compositions carefully rendered. These include the devil devouring a child (f. 57), a fool leading a donkey to a windmill (f. 55), and the last drawing in the manuscript (the float from the final carnival celebration), a ship of fools with the Lutheran minister Andreas Osiander (d. 1552) onboard, holding a backgammon board and surrounded by fools and devils (f. 65) – a satiric reference to the Protestant-Catholic controversy in Nuremberg during this years. These drawings are the work of an experienced illustrator, who trained in the Augsburg-Nuremberg area with artists like Hans Schäufelein, Hans Sebald Beham, or Jörg Breu the Younger and who transmits the legacy of Albrecht Dürer.

We are grateful to Fritz Koreny for his expertise.

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9 CIRCLE OF DIRK VELLERT (Antwerp 1511-1547) Episode from the Life of Abraham (?) (227 x 204 mm., oval)Antwerp, c. 1535

Pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white, partly oxidized, on orange-brown prepared paper, within black ink framing lines; bears numbering in black graphite, lower center “3” and in black ink, erased, lower right “323”; initials in black chalk and an old attribution in black ink on verso: “J.W.; L van Leyden;” unidentified collector’s mark “P” in red, in pencil in center “Engelbrechtsen,” in excellent condition.

PROVENANCE: Henry Oppenheimer (1859-1932), London, collector from antiquities to majolica, his sale, London, Christie’s, 13 July 1936, lot 210; Anonymous Sale (The Property of a Lady), London, Christie’s, 24 March 1964, lot 127; Kurt Meissner (1909-2004), Zurich, photographer, collector, and art dealer, his collector’s mark on backing sheet (Lugt 4665), sale of his estate, Amsterdam, Sotheby’s, 14 December 2006, lot 14 (as Circle of Vellert).

EXHIBITED AND PUBLISHED: London, Burlington House, 1927, cat. no. 521 (as Cornelis Engelbrechtsen); Handzeichnung Alter Meister, 1967-8, p. 69, cat. no. 130 (as Vellert); Forster-Hahn, 1969, cat. no. 46 (as Vellert).

Although preparatory for a stained glass roundel, this compositional drawing is much more highly finished than a mere cartoon would need to be. Penned and washed on prepared orange-brown paper (itself an unusual choice) and skillfully highlighted with white, the virtuoso image endures as an outstanding example of a Northern Renaissance drawing.

The drawing is by an artist in the circle of Dirk Vellert, a leading Netherlandish artist of stained glass designs by whom more than fifty drawings are extant, many for surviving roundels. Konowitz has demonstrated that Vellert’s drawings represent various stages of completion and different drawing styles (2013, 2017 forthcoming). His two major series are for the Life of the Virgin and the History of Abraham. This drawing is closest to one of the Presentation in the Temple, which is highly finished in a chiaroscuro technique, similarly highlighted in white (British Museum, Inv. No. 1952.1-21-85).

The raised vantage point of the viewer, the Renaissance columns and pilasters, the voluminous folds and their modeling with thick parallel lines, and the facial and figural types all resemble Vellert’s style, especially evident in the Presentation in the Temple. The subject remains a mystery. A sale catalogue suggests that it depicts Saint Benedict approached by his pupils Maurus and Placidus and their fathers. It is possible that the figures on the right are the Israelites led by Moses, who strikes the rock of Kadesh from which water springs (Exodus 17:6). In this case, the man eating at a table could be an allegory of the rich man, ignoring the poverty at his door.

We are grateful to Ellen Konowitz for her expertise.

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10 ROMAN SCHOOL Children Playing Marbles (copy from a Roman sarcophagus) (76 x 296 mm.)Italy, Rome (?), c. 1550

Pen, brown ink, and brown wash, heightened with white, framed with a line in pen and black ink; drawing carefully pasted into a later mount; inscribed on the recto of the mount, in pen and brown ink in a nineteenth- or early twentieth-century hand, “By P. Battoni from the ruins in Herculaneum [sic] – from Sir J. Reynold’s Collection,” and on the verso of the mount various notations in ink: “Bot. by W. Sadler,” “AA, 71pe,” “XVII,” and “1-17-104.”

PROVENANCE: Statably from the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792); Christie´s, London, 12 December 1985, lot 539; acquired there by the late Jan Krugier (Poland 1928-Geneva, Switzerland 2008), his sale, Sotheby´s, New York, 28 January, 2015, lot 17.

EXHIBITED AND PUBLISHED: Dückers, 1999, p. 416, repr.; Rylands, 1999, p. 415, repr.

Greco-Roman antiquities were much admired during the Italian Renaissance. Artists often included allusions to recently discovered classical art in their compositions; they also studied, measured, and copied coins, gems, sculpture, and buildings from antiquity. This anonymous drawing is evidence of such fascination.

Carefully rendered and finely modeled, the drawing copies the front panel of a late antique Roman sarcophagus depicting children playing with nuts, a precursor to the game of marbles. Made c. 275/300 C.E. to honor the child Lucius Aemilius Daphnus, who died at the age of four years and six days, and commissioned by his mother Julia, the casket is now in Vienna in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. no. I1129).

A group of five children on the left play a hand game called morra to determine which one will play first. Two youths in the center fight, presumably over the outcome. On the right, a youth casts marbles on the ground as his companions look on. The style suggests that the drawing was executed in the second half of the sixteenth century perhaps in Rome.

We are grateful to Chris Fischer for his expertise.

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11 MAERTEN DE VOS (Antwerp, 1532-1603) Adoration of the Shepherds (107 x 143 mm.) Flanders, Antwerp, after 1580

Black chalk, pen, and brown ink with brown wash on paper, traced for transfer to an engraved copper plate, slightly cropped on the sides, laid down on card.

PROVENANCE: Amédée-Paul-Emile Gasc (1817-?), his collector’s mark lower right corner (Lugt 1131), his sale Paris, 11-12 January 1861, no. 437; possibly Noël Clément-Janin, Paris (Lugt 571a).

One function drawings served was as preparation for other works of art. Within this category we can include underdrawings in medieval manuscripts, sketches to work out figures or settings, cartoons for stained glass or paintings, and, in the post-Gutenberg era, preparatory designs for prints, as is the case with the present small drawing made for transfer.

Maerten de Vos’s representation of the Adoration of the Shepherds, along with the Annunciation to the Shepherds seen through the open arch formed by the Roman ruins, was engraved in reverse by Jan Collaert the Younger for publication. The engraving appears in Martinus Baccius Den Schadt der Catholicker Sermoonen (Antwerp, Hieronumus Verdussen, 1597) (The New Hollstein: The Collaert Dynasty, part 7, p. 35, no. 1727). There are 6 other preparatory drawings by Maerten de Vos known from this series, including two in the Albertina, one in Brussels, two in Florence, and one in Hamburg (The New Hollstein, nos. 1732-35, 1737, and 1743).

According to Carel van Mander, the artist was trained by his father Pieter de Vos in Antwerp and subsequently visited various places in Italy, including Rome and Venice. Settling for a period in the latter city, Maerten probably studied with the great Venetian master, Tintoretto. Returning to Antwerp, he enrolled in the guild in 1558 and became one of the city’s most important painters of altarpieces. He executed many drawings, some of which are studies for paintings; others, such as this one, are preparatory works for printed editions. The fine penwork, dense composition, and loose, graphic handling of textures, such as the hair, feathers, and straw, recall the artist’s dated works after about 1580, such as the signed and dated drawing in the Institut Néerlandais in Paris (Inv. no. 1772). The antique architecture signals his sustained interest in Roman models.

We are grateful to Armin Kunz for his expertise.

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12 FLEMISH SCHOOL A Study of Monsters and Grotesques (267 x 416 mm.)Belgium, Antwerp (?), c. 1625-1650

Graphite on paper, with some wash, no watermark, tear in left corner, in excellent condition.

PROVENANCE: Carlo Lucio, his collector’s mark lower right corner (Lugt L3269), active twentieth to twenty-first century, collected drawings of Italian, French, and Flemish schools.

PUBLISHED: Koreny, 2012, p. 121, ill. 117.

Graphite as a drawing medium used in place of silverpoint, pen and ink, or chalk began to take hold only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The dense system of parallel graphite shading here represents an early seventeenth-century development in draftsmanship.

This large sheet depicts all manner of marvelous creatures. There is a pig-faced flying fish holding a tennis racket, a pot-bellied peasant raising his glass in a toast with a child’s pinwheel behind him, a cripple harassed from behind by a web-footed midget, a bespectacled figure holding a knife by candlelight to operate in a cripple’s mouth, a youth sticking his finger in a barrel, and much else. Although thoroughly Boschian in inspiration, not a single detail actually derives from a work by the imaginative Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516).

The drawing is by the same hand and of nearly the same dimensions (c. 279 x 425 mm.) as a drawing in Kansas City in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Inv. No. F64-11), published by Fritz Koreny. Koreny dates the drawing to the first half of the seventeenth century and describeds it as “reception” of Bosch. Erwin Pokorny suggests that the technique in this drawing resembles that of David Teniers the Younger (Antwerp 1610-Brussels 1690) and cannot date earlier than c. 1625. The vitality of Bosch’s art continued through the seventeenth century in the art of Teniers, Adrian Brouwer, Frans Francken the Younger, and others. Teniers liked to use fantastical Boschian details in his compositions and executed at least three versions of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, all inspired by Bosch. Similar details appear in these works by Teniers, including the reptilian-faced seated figure wearing a cowl in the lower left corner of our drawing. In the lower center, the motif of the rotund seated figure raising his glass also echoes details found in Teniers paintings. A watermark in the last years of the sixteenth century in the Kansas City drawing is consistent with the proposed date of our drawing.

We are grateful to Erwin Pokorny and Fritz Koreny for their expertise.

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13 MASTER OF THE MEDICI BANQUET DECANTERS (active Florence 1650-1670) A Wine Decanter with a Seahorse, Dolphins, and Putti (c. 342 x 225 mm.) Florence, c. 1650-1670

Pen and brown ink with blue wash over graphite, verso blank except for miscellaneous numbers in pencil (modern) “ch 84” in upper center, and “2,” “4,” “6,” and “8” at the center edges of the sheet; inscribed: “Il Piede deve essere di ne Delfini che formino un Triangolo/ Dietro al Cavallo Marino ne vuole essere un altro che fara forma di Navicella/ La bocca deve essere nel luogo segnato A/ La Coda segnata B e del Cavallo Marino che va dall’altra banda.”

PROVENANCE: From an album composed by Thomas Tomkins (1743-1816), his sale, London, Mr. Hickman’s Gallery, 25-28 February 1818, part of lot 289 (as “The Works of Stefano della Bella”); Robert Stayner Holford (1808-1892), thence by descent to his son, Sir George Holford (1860-1926), sold London, Sotheby’s, 22 May 1928, part of lot 29B (as Stefano della Bella); the album broken up and dispersed, Christie’s, London, “A Collection of Drawings by Stefano della Bella,” 18 March 1975 (as Stefano della Bella); Private Collection, USA.

PUBLISHED: Heikamp, 1986, p. 233, pl. 185.

The deft use of graphite, combined with fluid application of blue wash, set this inventive drawing apart from mere preparatory studies, as does its subject matter, ingenious designs for lavish glassware for the court.

Known as the Master of the Blue Wash trionfi da tavola (or the Master of the Medici Banquet Decanters), this artistic personality was identified in 1986 in an article by Detlef Heikamp, who ascribed to him twenty-two studies in the Tomkins Album. Heikamp points out that although the drawings paraphrase Stefano della Bella’s printed material published in 1646 (see his Raccolta di varii capricii et nove invention di cartelle e ornamenti), their technique is subtly different (on the prints, see Massar, 1997). Eleven of the drawings use a blue wash, a medium unknown in any authentic drawings by della Bella. Andrew Robison stresss that the artist of these drawings cannot be the engraver, who provided the source of inspiration for the drawings. He proposes instead that the draftsman may have had access to della Bella’s preparatory studies for the engravings following the latter’s return to Florence from Paris in 1650 (in Chapman 2011, nos. 32-33, pp. 80-81).

Apart from their artistic excellence, the drawings are important in recording Florentine baroque glass tableware, little of which has survived. In 1569, Duke Cosimo I de Medici sparked the development of Florentine glassmaking, and many artists, including Stefano della Bella and the related Master of the Medici Banquet Decanters, participated in the newly created industry under successive Medici patrons.

We are grateful to Erwin Pokorny and Fritz Koreny for their expertise.

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LORENZO MONACO (1370-1425)Sheet from a Choir Book, with underdrawing of Christ and the Apostles Entering the Temple in Jerusalem (425 x 310 mm.)Italy, Florence, c. 1409-1410

Provenance: Private Collection, USA; Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, Catalogue 8, 1999, no. 17.

Exhibited and Published (selected): Pia Palladino, and Laurence B. Kanter, Fra Angelico, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New Haven and London, 2005, pp. 13-19, no 1B (as Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico); Angelo Tartuferi, Daniela Parenti, Lorenzo Monaco: A Bridge from Giotto’s Heritage to the Renaissance, exh, cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (9 May-24 September, 2006), Florence, 2006, pp. 288-290, no. XIB (with earlier literature).

Acquired: 1999, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Lia Acheson Wallace Gift, Inv. No. 1999.391.

CIRCLE OF JACOPO BELLINI (1396-1470)Studies from a Model Book: Resting Stag in Profile and Walking Deer (124 x 177 mm.; c. 123 x 179 mm.)Italy, Veneto, c. 1400-1450

Provenance: Ian Woodner (1903-1990); Christie’s, London, 2 July 1991, no. 69; Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, Catalogue 1 [1992], nos. 11a-11b.

Published: D. Cordellier, La Revue des musées de France. Revue du Louvre 4, 1993, p. 79.

Acquired: 1993, Cabinet des dessins, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RF 43328-43329.

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A Selection of Drawings Sold by Les Enluminures1993 - 2010

When the gallery opened in 1991, I originally intended to offer Old Master drawings, especially those before 1500, for sale on a regular basis. This short section includes thumbnails and brief descriptions of selected early drawings sold (mostly to institutions) in these early years of our activity.

Sandra Hindman

FRA ANTONIO DA NEGROPONTE, attributed to (active Veneto, last third of the fifteenth century)Madonna and Child Enthroned (115 x 78 mm.)Italy, Veneto, c. 1450-1500

Provenance: Emile Wauters (Brussels 1846-Paris 1933), his sale, Amsterdam, W. M. Mensing chez F. Muller et Cie, 15-16 June 1926, no. 349 (attributed to Fra Angelico); Walter Hugelshofer (1899-1987), Zurich, sale New York, Sotheby’s, 16 January 1986, no. 68 (attributed to Antonio Vivarini); Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, 1993.

Published: [online] http://arts-graphiques.louvre.fr/detail/oeuvres/5/502144-Vierge-a-lEnfant-en-trone

Acquired: 1993, Cabinet des dessins, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RF 43384.

MONOGRAMMIST “S” (copy after Martin Schongauer) (active in the 1520s)A Bishop’s Crosier (293 x 114 mm.)Upper Rhine, Colmar (?), 1490s

Provenance: Robert Staynor Holford (1809-1892); Les Enlumi-nures, Paris and Chicago, Catalogue 14, Pen to Press/ Paint to Print, 2009, no. 43.

Published: P. Béguerie-De Paepe, La Revue des musées de France. Revue du Louvre 2, April 2010, p. 52, , P. Béguerie-de Paepe and Magali Haas, Schongauer à Colmar, Antwerp, 2012, p. 51.

Acquired: 2009, Colmar, Musée d’Unterlinden, Inv. No. 2009.5.1.

FRENCH SCHOOLGaston Phebus, Livre de la Chasse and Livre de l’Ordre de Chevalerie with 55 watercolor drawingsFrance, likely Lorraine, c. 1510-1520

Provenance: Monsieur le Curé d’Anclois, dated October 1683 to January 1684; Mr. Dufosteau 1729, his hunting records from 1732 on ; H. P. Kraus, New York, Catalogue 172 [1985], no. 7; Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, Important Illuminated Ma-nuscripts, 2000, no. 22.

Acquired: 2001, Private Collection, Middle East.

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JAN GOSSART (active Antwerp 1478-1532)Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos (210 mm. in diame-ter) Antwerp, c. 1515-1520

Provenance: August Schoy (1838-1885), Antwerp; Alfred Strölin, Sr. (1871-1954), Lausanne; Ian Wooddner (1903-1990), New York, sale Christie’s, 2 July 1991, no. 194; Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, Catalogue 1 [1992], no. 33; Private Collection.

Exhibited and Published: Maryan W. Ainsworth et al., ed., Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance. The Complete Works, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010, no. 85, pp. 348-350 (with earlier literature).

Acquired: 2010, Private Collection.

CHRISTOPHER BOCKSDORFER (1490-1553)Study for a Stained Glass: the Death of Virginia (432 x 330 mm.)Germany or Switzerland, c. 1525

Provenance: Walter Hugelshofer, Zurich (1899-1987); Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, Catalogue 5, no. 42.

Exhibited and Published: Die Kunst der Donauschule, 1490-1540, Stift St. Florian and Schlossmuseum Linz, 1965, no. 330; Medieval to Modern: Recent Acquisitions of Drawings, Prints, and

Illustrated Books, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008, no. 10, p. 2.

Acquired: 2005, by anonymous gift, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Inv. 277-010.

PETER PAUL RUBENS (Siegen 1577-Antwerp 1640)Portrait of Helene Fourment (study for the Garden of Love) (225 x 204 mm.)Belgium, Antwerp, 1631-1633

Provenance: Jonathan Richardson, Sr. (1665-1745); Thomas Hud-son (1701-1779); Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792); Sir Herbert Cook of Richmond; Mrs. Franz Drey, London; Walter Hugelshofer (1899-1987), Zurich; Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, Cata-logue 3 [1998], no. 37.

Exhibited and Published: L. Burchard and R. A. d’Hulst, Tekenin-gen van P. P. Rubens, Antwerp, Rubenshuis, 1956, no. 127 (with earlier literature).

Acquired: 2007, Private Collection.

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SELECTED LITERATURE

Ames-Lewis, Francis and Joanne Wright. Drawing in the Italian Renaissance Workshop. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983. Exhibition catalog.

Chapman, Hugo, David Lachenmann, and Margaret Morgan Grasselli. Italian Master Drawings from the Wolf-gang Ratjen Collection, 1525-1835. Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2011. Exhibition catalog.

Conway, Martin, ed. Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition of Flemish & Belgian Art: Burlington House, London, 1927. London: Country Life and Anglo-Belgian Union, 1927. Exhibition catalog.

Dickel, Hans, Stephanie Buck, and Guido Messling. Zeichnen vor Dürer: Die Zeichnungen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts in der Universitätsbibliothek. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2009.

Dückers, Alexander, et al. Linie, Licht und Schatten: Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski. Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett-Sammlung der Zeichnungen und Druckgra-phik and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 1999. Exhibition catalog.

Forster-Hahn, Françoise. Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Kurt Meissner, Zurich. Stanford: Stanford University, 1969. Exhibition catalog.

Friedländer, Max J. Early Netherlandish Painting: Dieric Bouts and Joos van Gent. New York and Washington: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968.

Goldner, George R., Carmen C. Bambach, Alessandro Cecchi, et al. The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997. Exhibition catalog.

Grasselli, Margaret Morgan. The Touch of the Artist: Master Drawings from the Woodner Collections. Was-hington, D.C. and New York: National Gallery of Art, 1995. Exhibition catalog.

Handzeichnungen Alter Meister aus Schweizer Privatbesitz. Bremen: Kunsthaus, 1967/8.

Heikamp, Detlef. “Studien zur Mediceischen Glaskunst, Archivalien, Entwurfszeichnungen, Gläser und Scherben.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz 30, Heft 1/2 (1986): 214-234.

Hindman, Sandra, and Ariane Bergeron-Foote. Flowering of Medieval French Literature: “Au parler que m’aprist ma mere.” London: Paul Holberton for Les Enluminures, 2014.

Holcomb, Melanie. Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.

Konowitz, Ellen. “More ‘Drawings as Intermediary Stages’: Dirk Vellert’s ‘History of Abraham’.” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 5, no. 2 (2013), DOI:10.5092/jhna.2013.5.2.2

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Konowitz, Ellen. Images in Light and Line: The Stained Glass Designs and Prints of Dirk Vellert. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, forthcoming.

Koreny, Fritz. Hieronymus Bosch: Die Zeichnungen: Werkstatt und Nachfolge bis zum Ende des 16. Jahrhun-derts. Belgium, Turnhout, 2012.

Lehrs, Max. The Playing Cards of the Master E. S. of 1466. London: Quaritch, 1892.

Lugt, Frits. Les Marques de Collections Dessins & d’Estampes. Fondation Custodia. http://www.marquesde-collections.fr

Massar, P. D. “Drawings after Prints by Stefano della Bella.” Print Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1997): 283-288.

Rylands, Philip, ed. The Timeless Eye: Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection. Berlin: G + H, 1999. Exhibition catalog.

Scheller, Robert W. Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900-ca. 1470). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995.

Shoemaker, Innis. “Filippino Lippi as a Draughtsman.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1975.

Sieveking, Hinrich, Peter Prange, and Andrew Robison. German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1580-1900. Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2010. Exhibition catalog.

Stange, Alfred. Deutsche Malerei der Gotik. Berlin and Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1934-60.

Suckale, Robert. Die Erneuerung der Malkunst vor Dürer. Bamberg and Petersberg: Michael Imhoff, 2009.

Acknowledgments: with thanks to Ariane Bergeron-Foote, Dominique Cordellier, Chris Fischer, Rima Girnius, George Goldner, Lesley Hill, Ellen Konowitz, Fritz Koreny, Armin Kunz, Erwin Pokorny, Innis Shoemaker, and the team at Les Enluminures: Adrienne Albright, Karen Gennaro, Keegan Goepfert, Gaia Grizzi, Emily Runde, Matt Westerby.

Text: Sandra Hindman

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