Thursday, December 13, 2018

Mannerist Prints and Studies by Battista Franco

Battista Franco
Three Soldiers from the Antique with a Putto
before 1561
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Battista Franco
Perseus and two Putti with Hercules
before 1561
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Battista Franco
Studies of Heads
before 1561
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Battista Franco
Six Subjects after Antique Cameos
before 1561
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Battista Franco
Hercules killing the Lernean Hydra
ca. 1552-61
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Battista Franco
The Flagellation
ca. 1552-61
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The flagellator at far left (above) was the subject of a preparatory drawing (in reverse, below) now in the Royal Collection at Windsor.  One of Franco's figure-studies for the central figure of Christ (minus loincloth and beard) also survives and is also below, now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  The printed catalogue of the Royal Collection reports a "persistent suggestion" that Franco's print of The Flagellation copied a lost painting by Titian, described by Vasari and sent to the Queen of Portugal.  "Scholars have been unanimous in dating the print to Franco's final Venetian period, whether or not they have accepted the design as his." 

Battista Franco
A Flagellator (study for The Flagellation print)
ca. 1552-55
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Battista Franco
Standing Nude (study for The Flagellation print)
ca. 1552-55
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Battista Franco
Eve plucking the Apple
ca. 1560
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Battista Franco
Philosopher in Contemplation
before 1561
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam


Battista Franco
Dead Christ supported by Angels
before 1555
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Battista Franco
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
ca. 1552-54
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Battista Franco
St John the Baptist preaching in the Wilderness
before 1561
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

after Battista Franco
Antique Statue-group in niche - Pan and Apollo
ca. 1540-80
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"The group of Pan and Apollo was recorded in the Cesi sculpture garden by Aldrovandi in an account of the antique statues of Rome published in 1556 but based on notes made six years earlier.  It was given to the Ludovisi in the summer of 1622 and eleven years later was recorded in the 'Bosco della Statue' outside the Palazzo Grande in the family estates on the Pincio.  It remained there until the early years of the nineteenth century when, with most of the other statues, it was installed in a casino on the estate which was transformed into a museum.  Between 1885 and 1890 it was taken with the other statues in the collection to the new palace built for the Prince of Piombino (the inherited title of the Ludovisi descendants).  It was purchased with the bulk of the collection by the Italian government in 1901 and moved in that year to the Museo Nazionale."

*          *          *

"The exact subject was much debated.  For Lafreri and Perrier it represented Pan teaching Apollo.  Montfaucon recorded this as the common view in Rome, but pointed out that Apollodorus does not record that Pan taught Apollo music but rather the arts of divination.  Maffei with reference to a painting by Polygnotus of Marsyas with Olympos suggested this was the subject.  For others it was a Satyr and a young Faun, simply a Satyr and a Youth, or Silenus and Bacchus.  In this century [the 20th] this group has been generally considered as of Pan with either Daphnis or Olympos and sometimes linked with a group of Pan struggling with Olympos mentioned by Pliny as in the Saepta Julia and companion with a Chiron teaching Achilles.  Another treatment by Heliodorus of the same subject (perhaps another version of the same statue) was recorded by Pliny in the Portico of Octavia and described as the second-best 'symplegma'.  The fact that at least eight complete versions of the marble group have survived strongly suggests that this statue by Heliodorus was the prototype, even though this depends on a somewhat metaphorical meaning being given to 'luctantes' (struggling).  Scholars now suppose that Pliny confused Olympos with Daphnis.  The boy had in fact been identified as Daphnis in the captions of sixteenth-century prints of both the Farnese and Ludovisi (then Cesi) versions."

– Francis Haskell, from Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (Yale University Press, 1981)