Italian Drawings Identified by Philip Pouncey

Perino del Vaga (Pietro Buonaccorsi)
St Luke
ca. 1539
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"This drawing as well as a pendant study of St. Matthew [below] was recognised by Pouncey amongst the anonymous Florentine drawings as Perino's study for the figure in the Chapel of the Crucifixion in S. Marcello al Corso, Rome.  The decoration of the vault includes a representation of the creation of Eve and figures of the four Evangelists accompanied by putti.  Bernice Davidson in 1966 traced the history of this commission, which was executed in two stages, and she has studied the various preparatory drawings.  Begun before the sack of Rome in 1527 but left unfinished, the decoration was taken up again by Perino on his return from Genoa in 1539, when the task of executing the frescoes, after Perino's designs, was confided to Daniele da Volterra.  The frescoes of St. Luke and St. Matthew date from this second period of work in the Chapel, as must the two Louvre drawings.  Davidson remarks that this monumental figure of St. Luke could have been inspired by Michelangelo's Prophet Isaiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Research on the Louvre's records after Pouncey had made the attribution revealed that Jabach [17th-century owner of the drawings] had been aware of the identity of the artist and Morel d'Arleux [early cataloguer at the Louvre] of the relationship with Daniele's frescoes, but that this information had been forgotten."

Perino del Vaga (Pietro Buonaccorsi)
St Matthew
ca. 1539
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Baldassare Peruzzi
Apollo
ca. 1520-25
drawing
Musée du Louvre

This study is most probably of a classical statue on view in Rome in the early 16th century, as it was also drawn by other artists, including Raphael.  Pouncey surmised in 1952, after discovering the drawing among the anonymous Italians, that it might have originated with similar modelli produced by Peruzzi for frescoes on the loggia vaults of Villa Madama; but that this Apollo – for whatever reason – was not used.    

Baldassare Peruzzi (also called Baldassare da Siena)
Arms of Pope Leo X Medici and Cardinals Orsini and Sauli
ca. 1513-17
drawing
British Museum

"Recognised by Pouncey in 1946 when it was with Dr. Scharf.  His attribution was confirmed by the subsequent uncovering of an inscription in a sixteenth-century hand in the top right corner of the verso: mano di [Baldas]sare de Siena.  The arms on the left-hand shield are those of Cardinal Franciotto Orsini, and the right-hand shield those of Cardinal Bandinello de' Sauli.  Originally both shields contained the latter's arms; Orsini's are drawn, by Peruzzi himself, on another piece of paper carefully stuck over the left-hand shield.  Sauli was implicated in the Petrucci conspiracy against the life of Leo and was arrested on 19 May 1517.  He was soon released and lived on in retirement until March 1518, but it seems unlikely that he would have commissioned such a decoration after his disgrace.  The design can therefore be dated between 1513, when Leo was elected Pope, and 1517.  It was later adapted for the use of Orsini, who was created cardinal in June 1517 and who died in 1533 or 1534.  The fact that Leo's name is painted out in the tablet below while the papal arms are unaltered suggests that this adaptation was made during the pontificate of Leo's nephew, Clement VII (1523-34)."  

Baldassare Peruzzi (also called Baldassare da Siena)
The Discovery of Fire
ca. 1516
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The name Baldassare da Siena is written on the back of this drawing in an old hand.  The owner from whom it was seized during the Revolution, trying to clarify the faint script with over-writing, had turned this into Salsava de Sienne.  The cataloguer of seized art at the Louvre duly copied Salsava de Sienne – noting at the time that this was an unknown name.  Before long the Discovery of Fire found itself relegated to the anonymous Italians where it languished until Pouncey found it and brought it forth in 1960. 

Baldassare Peruzzi
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus
ca. 1520-23
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Discovered in the 1950s among the anonymous Italian drawings.  This is a modello for one of the four oval frescoes in the north-east cupola of the Loggia of the Villa Madama, Rome, executed for Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, later Pope Clement VII, between 1520 and 1523.  Giulio Romano and Giovanni da Udine were in charge of the overall programme of the decoration, but, as Pouncey was the first to observe, the drawings for the oval compositions are clearly by Peruzzi."  

Baldassare Peruzzi
The Tiber
ca. 1525
drawing
British Museum

In 1946 Pouncey successfully argued for changing the attribution of The Tiber to Peruzzi.  It had most recently been credited to Niccolò dell'Abbate, and before that to Giulio Romano.  The subject is a colossal Roman marble sculpture unearthed in Rome in 1512.  Pouncey noted that Peruzzi was said to have incorporated the statue into the façade painting he executed on a nearby house.   

Bernardino Poccetti
Funeral of Blessed Albert of Messina
ca. 1612
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey proposed in 1953 to deprive Federico Zuccaro of the credit for this drawing (credit the museum had given to him for many years) and to recognize the author as Bernardino Poccetti.  Pouncey had discovered the painted altarpiece (in S. Maria del Carmine, Florence) for which this drawing was the modello.  However, Poccetti had not painted the altarpiece himself, but had, at the end of his life, provided the design for another painter to execute.  This last twist had somewhat complicated Pouncey's task of identification.  

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Virgin and Child
ca. 1522-24
drawing
British Museum

"The original attribution was to Andrea del Sarto and when in Skippe's collection it was thought to be by Sebastiano del Piombo.  The attribution to Polidoro was made by Pouncey shortly before the Skippe sale in 1958."

Cesare Pollini (Cesare Franchi)
Antique Cavalry Encounters
ca. 1590
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The 17th-century collector Filippo Baldinucci attributed this drawing to Benvenuto Cellini when he owned it.  Later, at the Louvre, it was consigned to the anonymous Florentines until moved to Pollini by Pouncey.  There are two separate studies on the sheet, in different registers, with no necessary connection between them.    

Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio Licinio)
David and Goliath
ca. 1530-32
drawing
Musée du Louvre

This is another case where a drawing comes into the Louvre from the Jabach collection (sold to Louis XIV in 1671) with a correct attribution – in this case, to Pordenone – which is then shortly "forgotten" by the museum.  Someone on the staff eventually suggests another name – in this case, Cristofano Allori – and the drawing goes by that name for a while.  Then later staff realize that this latest identity is unsupported by evidence.  Therefore, they drop it.  Then the drawing sinks quietly out of sight among the anonymous Italians for a century or two.  In the 1950s Pouncey comes along and finds it there.  And quick as a wink, he gives the museum the same information that was given to the museum in 1671.  

Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio Licinio)
The Lamentation
1522
drawing
British Museum

"Writing about this drawing for the British Museum Quarterly, Pouncey first commented on the stature of Pordenone himself: 'By all accounts he was a formidable personality, and his art too is formidable: in its growth from rustic Quattrocento beginnings to an almost Baroque illusionism that attracted Rubens; in its pioneering fusion of Venetian colour with a Central Italian sense of form acquired by study of Raphael and Michelangelo; and in its impact on such varied and prominent artists as Giulio Romano and Parmigianino.'"

Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio Licinio)
Ornamental Figure with Putti
ca. 1527-31
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey moved this figure group (conceived as an element in a decorative frieze) from Lelio Orsi, the name under which it entered the museum in the 19th century, to Pordenone. 

Mattia Preti
Music-Makers around a Table
ca. 1630
drawing
Musée du Louvre

This drawing is related to the Concert in the Doria Gallery, Rome, an early work of Mattia Preti, as Pouncey pointed out.  By bringing the drawing into relation with the painting, Pouncey identified the only drawing by Mattia Preti that can be securely dated earlier than 1650.  

Camillo Procaccini
Standing Draped Figure
ca. 1592-95
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Procaccini's standing figure matches one he painted on an organ shutter in Milan Cathedral, as Pouncey showed.  The draped man, attentively turning, is a bystander in the scene of David playing before King Saul. 

Raffaellino del Colle
Head of a Girl
ca. 1525
drawing
private collection

"No attribution had been forthcoming until, at the beginning of 1984, Pouncey made the convincing suggestion of Raffaellino del Colle.  As drawings by this artist are extremely rare the attribution was made on the basis of paintings.  Pouncey likens this Head of a Girl to the general cast of features found in faces in Raffaellino's triptych (circa 1524) of the Assumption of the Virgin in the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Valdabisso, Piobbico."