Saturday, April 2, 2016

Drawings by Polidoro da Caravaggio, 16th century

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Two faces
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Polidoro Caldara is not remembered as often or as vividly as he should be. He is usually called Polidoro da Caravaggio in the art history footnotes where he now mostly dwells. No one now even knows what Polidoro's age was when he arrived in Rome around 1515 and became a menial in Raphael's large studio. Subsequent events make it clear that Polidoro rose quickly in reputation and responsibility under the supervision of established Raphael artists, including Giulio Romano and Perino del Vaga. By the mid-1520s Polidoro was fulfilling commissions to fresco the exteriors of Roman palaces with monochrome recreations of scenes from Roman history. Over and over one reads of Renaissance artists covering facades of buildings with spectacular decorations and murals. Exposed to weather, these paintings seldom survived for more than a couple of generations. Polidoro's work in this medium is known now only from fragmentary drawings and engraving made by admiring contemporaries. When the Sack of Rome occurred in 1527 Polidoro, like many other artists, fled the region. He settled at Messina in Sicily where he remained for the rest of a too-brief life that ended in the early 1540s. Several of the short available biographies repeat a traditional story that "his servant" killed Polidoro in order to steal his money.      

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Two youths
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Polidoro da Caravaggio
River god and nymph
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Two cupids
16th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Figure studies with raised arm
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Figure study with raised arm
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Studies for the Transfiguration
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Studies for the Transfiguration
16th century
drawing
British Museum

The drawings and engravings below were made by other artists copying figures from Polidoro's frescoes or paintings. Scattered images like these are in many cases the only surviving evidence that such works existed at all.

Unknown artist after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Figures of soldiers copied from a fresco
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Unknown artist after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Figures copied from a fresco
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Bartolomeo Passarotti after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Figures of women
16th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Michele Lucchese after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Pagan ritual
1554
engraving
British Museum

"Pascal shared with the unbelievers a perception that the divine was absent from the visible world. For him, the world could serve only as a theological catapult for flinging us into something that disdained contact with the world. But proof by absence is the hardest. Observing men's rapt involvement in their amusements  their horrific gravity as they stalked their prey during a hunt, or rehearsed a dance step, or fingered fabric  he recognized in them the derided image of ancient worship, when the signs of the world were enough to fill the soul with awe."  

 from The Ruin of Kasch by Roberto Calasso, translated by William Weaver and Stephen Sartarelli (Harvard University Press, 1994)

Sebastiano di Re after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Lion attacking horse
1578
engraving
British Museum

Édouard Manet after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Figure study
1857
drawing
British Museum