Saturday, April 29, 2017

Drawings made in Italy before 1600

Andrea del Sarto
Figures behind balustrade
1522
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
   But as for me, helas, I may no more.
   The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
   Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
   Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
   As well as I may spend his time in vain.
   And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written her fair neck round about:
   'Noli me tangere for Caesar's I am,
   And wild for to hold though I seem tame.'

 Sir Thomas Wyatt (ca. 1503-1542)

Andrea del Sarto
Drapery study
ca. 1517
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Perino del Vaga
Study for St Sebastian
ca. 1511-34
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amseterdam

Perino del Vaga
Vertumnus and Pomona
ca. 1527-28
drawing
British Museum

Pellegrino Tibaldi
Christ at the Last Judgment
ca. 1550-55
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Federico Zuccaro
Statue of General standing in niche
ca. 1565-75
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Right well I wote most mighty Soveraine,
   That all this famous antique history
   Of some th'abundance of an idle braine
   Will judged be, and painted forgery,
   Rather than matter of just memory,
   Sith none, that breatheth living air, does know,
   Where is that happy land of Faery,
   Which I so much do vaunt, yet no where show,
But vouch antiquities, which no body can know.

 Edmund Spenser (ca. 1552-1599)

Federico Barocci
St Catherine of Alexandria
ca. 1560
drawing
British Museum

Federico Barocci
St Francis receiving stigmata in a landscape
1570s
drawing
British Museum

Lorenzo Sabbatini
Sibyl seated on clouds with tablet
before 1576
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Marco Marchetti
Seated women and putto for frieze design
before 1588
drawing
British Museum

Marco Marchetti
Grotesque design with Neptune below, Jupiter above
before 1588
drawing
British Museum

Bernardino Campi
St Sebastian and Roman soldier
before 1584
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Bernardino Campi
Standing man, from behind 
ca. 1570
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

attributed to Antonio Campi
Sibyl reading
before 1591
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Virtue's branches wither, virtue pines,
   O pity, pity, and alack the time!
Vice doth flourish, vice in glory shines,
   Her gilded boughs above the cedar climb.

Vice hath golden cheeks, O pity, pity!
   She in every land doth monarchize.
Virtue is exiled from every city,
   Virtue is a fool, vice only wise.

O pity, pity! virtue weeping dies.
   Vice laughs to see her faint, alack the time!
This sinks; with painted wings the other flies.
   Alack, that best should fall, and bad should climb!

O pity, pity, pity! mourn, not sing!
Vice is a saint, virtue her underling.
Vice doth flourish, vice in glory shines,
Virtue's branches wither, virtue pines.

 Thomas Dekker (ca. 1570-ca. 1632)