A problematic drawing

Picture: Ashmolean

The most sensitive connoisseurs not only hold different views on this drawing; they espouse those views with utter certainty, and incredulity that disagreement is possible.  It's a drawing of Charity related to the fresco to the right of Pope Urban I in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican (see image below), and it's either by Raphael, or a copy by a good artist from his immediate circle.  I saw it at the Ashmolean in Oxford on Saturday. 

 

The mount labels it "? Raphael", and the Ashmolean website lists it as copy after Raphael, but it is in a box with authentic Raphaels.  The 1956 (reprinted 1972) catalogue by the excellent Karl Parker states that "there can be no doubt at all that it is a copy" (no. 665, p. 352).  Parker was a perceptive scholar and is an excellent guide to Raphael, but he was abstemious in attribution.  In the catalogue of the 1983 Raphael drawings exhibition at the British Museum, J.A. Gere and Nicholas Turner conclude that it is a copy by Penni.

 

On the other hand, Paul Joannides states that the attribution "is controversial, but needlessly so, for its inventiveness, both of arrangement and drawing style, is quite beyond any of Raphael's pupils" (The Drawings of Raphael, University of California Press 1983 p. 124 - cat. 453 and plate 46).  Joannides is probably the most eminent scholar of Raphael drawings, and I have found him an indispensable guide.  But I think he's wrong on this one. 

 

The woman's face is picked out with shading that closely imitates Raphael's style, but lacks his subtlety.  The drapery over the legs is not well related to the rest of the drawing, which becomes particularly apparent when you view it upside down, to get a sense of the tonal relationships.  Gere and Turner are right to criticise inconsistency of touch, with excessively dark shadows.  The elbows in particular lack Raphael's ability to capture light and shade.  Even in the reproduction above you can see the dark lump marking the elbow of the suckling child on the left.

Joannides is impressed with the foreshortening.  I'm not.  The arm of the child on the right seems almost foreshortened in reverse.  The forearm is excessive large and prominent, although it recedes from the picture plane.  It's noteworthy that this is a divergence from the completed fresco (below), where it continues straight rather than twisting down.  The contrapposto of this figure is also more awkward in the drawing.
 

Condition was not discussed by the sources I cite above.  There is some wear, particularly in the standing child.  It is at least plausible that this is a Raphael re-worked by an assistant.  Indeed, the very quality of finish speaks against Raphael's authorship; it reads more as a highly polished work of art in its own right rather than a working study, and Raphael's drawings seem always to be working studies.  However, there is insufficient variety of style and handling to conclude that two artists of markedly different ability worked on this sheet, and I don't think there is sufficient evidence to attribute even tentatively to Raphael.   

 

It's easier to make the case against this being by Raphael than to make the positive case for another attribution.  The attribution to Giulio Romano has generally been dismissed, partly because the drawing is so close to Raphael, and Giulio was a more distinctive personality.  He continued to be a very prolific draughtsman after Raphael's death, but abandoned chalk medium - maybe because he couldn't meet Raphael's standard. To my eyes, the handling of the face in particular is close to Giulio.  It seems to me plausible to speculate that this was an example of Giulio following Raphael unusually closely, but that must remain mere speculation; there is no strong visual evidence for his authorship.  The attribution to Penni is perhaps more likely, but this drawing seems to me to good to be Penni's.  Parker's 'After Raphael' seems right.

More Raphael at Oxford

Picture: Ashmolean

I've had two more fabulous days viewing Raphael drawings at the Ashmolean.  It's the world's best collection of drawings by the greatest draughtsman who ever lived, including really great drawings from every period. 

Picture: Ashmolean

First I saw a group from the end of his Florentine period to his first years in Rome. The drapery studies were a revelation - an outstanding group in superb condition. The range of techniques on the Study of Drapery for a Standing Figure in the Disputa is striking, and hard to appreciate in reproduction (but provided above anyway). The Four Heads and a Right Hand: studies for the Disputa is a fine drawing, but I suspect the study of the hand has been re-worked. The area is generally rubbed, and there is a repaired tear, but parts of it are sharply - but ineffectively - defined. Comparison with the Leonardesque sheet with studies after the Battle of Anghiari is instructive, because there he has precisely and beautifully defined the fingers down to the cuticles on the nails. We shouldn't expect exact replication of effect, but the quality of the fingers, particularly the nail on the middle finger, is not high.  I've been struck generally by the paucity of information that catalogues provide on the condition of drawings, so I'm making a particular effort to learn to identify damage, repair and re-working.  

 

This trip was a half day, then I cycled back to London - causing me to regret the purchase of Too Many Books from the Oxfam nearby.  But I returned a fortnight later for a full day, justifying an over-priced return train journey because it was snowing (wimpish, I know).

 

The Combat of Nude Men makes a powerful initial impression, and it was chosen for the front cover of the catalogue of the 1983 Raphael Drawings exhibition that brought together virtually all Raphael drawings in British collections.  But somehow those spindly legs and mannered bodies didn't work for me.  Its authenticity is unquestionable, but the anatomy of the men standing left and right is unsatisfying. 

 

On the other hand, A Nude Man Sitting on a Stone is one of my favourites, another of the Chigi Chapel studies that so impressed me at the Frankfurt exhibition.  It's discussed rather dismissively by Joannides, who describes it as 'brittle' and lacking 'atmospheric continuity', and the 1983 exhibition only showed its verso (another fine drawing containing rapid studies in different positions, reminiscent of Leonardo and anticipating Veronese).  I thought it a brilliantly dramatic study, and I valued it in its own terms, achieving a different effect from the other more atmospheric studies.  The sense of rippling muscles is conveyed much more effectively than in the more pedantic anatomy Combat of Nude Men.  The hatching is surprisingly sculptural, particularly in the right leg. 

 

Next time I will spend more time looking at drawings from Raphael's studio and circle. 

Art and the economy

Picture: Christie's

The Financial Times reports that the art market is ignoring the prevailing economic doom.  But maybe it's more accurate to say that the art market is reflecting prevailing economic doom.  The wealthy elite that buys art is having a good crisis. The very rich still have plenty of money, but the key factor is that they have fewer oppotunities to get great returns on investment.   So it makes economic sense to increase consumption, and buy more art.  The post-war economic boom was a time when the art market was relatively weak. It only started to take off in the 1960s and 1970s, after the period when returns on investment were highest. 

 

Of course a healthy market also needs supply, which in the case of the art market generally means that other rich people must be willing to sell.  That's why times of regionalised upheaval have been so good for the art market - when there's been a group of keen sellers, and another group of ready buyers (e.g. French Revolution, English Civil War).  Today demand has created its own supply by bidding up the works of contemporary artists. 

 

 

Bad Acquisitions

Picture: GalleristNY.com

New acquisitions are always exciting.  For all that I pretend to hate novelty (which I define as more or less anything that happened after about 1820), I still skip through the galleries when I hear of a new loan or acquisition.  Given high prices and small budgets, acquisitions are carefully considered and usually deserve the inevitable plaudits.  But some acquisitions are ill-judged, and have a negative effect on the whole collection.  I don't think there's enough critical commentary about these bad acquisitions.

 

My first nomination is this fine still life by Spaendonck that has been given to the Frick Collection in New York.  It's a perfectly nice painting, but not really consistent with the quality of the Frick.  One of Henry Clay Frick's earliest old master acquisitions was a still life of fruit by Jan van Os, but he didn't include it in his bequest.  I can't believe that this painting is much better.  It will be hard for the Frick ever again to acquire anything of the standard of their supreme masterpieces, but they have still picked up some fine things that complement the collection - like the wonderful Liotard still life donated by Heinemann.  The Spaendonck doesn't make the cut. 

 

A few years ago the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo NY sold off a load of old stuff, including the superb Roman bronze Artemis and the Stag, below (which I saw when it was subsequently on loan to the Met in New York). 

 

Picture: Arts Journal

 

They were raising money to buy contemporary art, including Tracy Emin's Only God Knows I'm Good (below).  I leave you to judge for yourselves.

 

Picture: Albright-Knox

 

Now a controversial nomination to end with.  The National Galleries of London and Edinburgh jointly bought two of the greatest paintings still in private hands - indeed, two of the absolute highlights of western art - Titian's Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto.  Their quality and importance is irreproachable; my beef is with the way they were bought.  First there was an undignified roadshow as these large and fragile paintings were carted around the world to drum up funding.  Then there is the permanent impermanence of joint ownership, meaning that they will be subject to the stress of being packed up and shifted hundreds of miles every few years, in perpetuity.  Sharing the burden of very large purchases has become established practice.  I find it deplorable.    



Degas and Ingres

Picture: NG

I recently noticed that the National Gallery is hanging the early Degas Young Spartans Exercising next to Ingres in the room of earlier nineteenth century art, rather than with the impressionists.  That makes a lot of sense, particularly given that the Ingres next to it  (Pindar and Ictinus, above) was owned by Degas and bought by the National Gallery from his studio sale.  The slightly odd thing is that the wall text makes no reference to that.  It's clearly an intentional hang, but it isn't explained.  The NG generally errs on the side of brevity with its wall text, which is probably safer - we go to see paintings, not read essays.  But sometimes a bit more explanation would be useful.

John House's Library

Photo: Courtauld

John House, the eminent scholar of nineteenth century French art, died early last year.  When I was getting my lunch in Spitalfields Market today, I found a stall selling off part of his library for a pound or two a book!  The stallholder said that he'd just bought a couple of boxes from a library of about 4.000 volumes.  I got his father's school Latin prize (Walter Pater's Appreciations, with an Essay on Style), a 1940s pamphlet on Manet's Olympia, a handful of exhibition catalogues and some old art history and theory books like Hans Jauss's rather formidable-sounding Towards an Aesthetic of Literary Reception.  I love to unearth old books like these, bringing to life historic debates and giving a misty glipse of old exhibitions. 

A day at the Louvre





Picture: MS



I just made it to Paris before the end of the Late Raphael exhibition, which I'll review more fully when I've had chance to digest it.  I got fully ten hours at the museum doing it as a daytrip on Eurostar - hurrah for late night openings!  The afternoon was spent in the print room looking at some more Raphael drawings.  The picture above is the view from my desk - it's a massive, magnificent room.  It was no problem getting an appointment, but I struggled a bit with the meaning of the 'red items' that could be seen only once.  Turns out it means that you can only request them once, ever - they keep a record of which drawings you've looked at, and on subsequent visits you can't request any 'red' items that you've seen before. 

 

I saw the best of the late Raphael drawings that weren't on display in the exhibition, including the Study for an Apostle for the Transfiguration (detail below), which was included in the exhibition in Madrid, but not Paris.  Seeing it in natural light in the print room gave a better appreciation of the immensely subtle shading than would have been possible in the artificial light of the exhibition.  I'd read the catalogue of Late Raphael before going and cross-checked the drawings I wanted to see, but to no avail - the catalogue reflected the Prado version of the show, and didn't include large swathes of the Paris exhibition, including a number of drawings that I fruitlessly requested in the study room.

Picture: MS

I didn't have time for much except Raphael, but I briefly saw the exhibitions of Giulio Romano drawings (excellent) and Luca Penni (so-so), both scheduled to complement Late Raphael.  On the way to Penni, I stopped off to see Poussin.  One thing I love about Poussin is that he's so unpopular - even when the rest of the museum is heaving, Poussin rooms always seem to be havens of tranquillity.  I needed that as a break from the scrum at Late Raphael. 

 

The damage done by the inexplicable, inexcusable, stupid Louvre Lens project was in evidence everywhere.  Jonathan Jones had a good article on it here.  The hang in the Large French Paintings room (below) is unbalanced by the removal of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (how can this be permitted to leave the Louvre?  It is the Louvre!). 

 

Incredibly, Raphael's Baldassare Castiglione was taken out of the Late Raphael exhibition to go to Lens.  Many museums have surrendered their most important works for this landmark exhibition, but the Louvre cut short its own loans because the absurd Lens project had to have everything immediately.
 

 

 

There were lots of conspicuous gaps, well-documented at The Art Tribune, which gives us the apposite term The Gruyere Museum.  I dread the next development - the Louvre Abu Dhabi.