Italian Drawings Identified by Philip Pouncey

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli (il Morazzone)
Jacob wrestling with the Angel
ca. 1610-12
drawing
British Museum

"The old attribution to Tintoretto was followed by Robinson and the drawing was kept under that name until Pouncey recognised the hand of Morazzone in July 1962 – an attribution confirmed by his subsequent observation that the drawing is a preliminary study for the painting, dateable shortly after 1610 in the Galleria Arcivescovile, Milan."

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Christ at the Column
1516
drawing
British Museum

"This drawing is a study for the Flagellation in the Borgherini Chapel in S. Pietro in Montorio, Rome, painted by Sebastiano del Piombo between 1520 and 1524 on the basis of a drawing supplied by Michelangelo in 1516.  It is one of a number of drawings connected with the composition, all traditionally ascribed to Michelangelo, which some recent critics have given to Sebastiano.  In spite of the traditional attribution to Michelangelo and its connection with Sebastiano's painting, Wilde omitted this drawing from his authoritative catalogue of the Museum's Michelangelo drawings, since he was of the opinion that it was by Sebastiano.  Pouncey and Gere urged its marked stylistic differences from Sebastiano's undoubtedly authentic drawings.  When Wilde was confronted with this point of view, there followed a lengthy consideration of the problem, at the end of which he was forced to concede that the drawing was indeed by Michelangelo."

Bartolomeo Montagna
Allegorical Figure with Sphere and Caduceus
ca. 1515-20
drawing
Musée du Louvre

No definitive interpretation has emerged for the significance of the Louvre's Allegorical Figure with Sphere and Caduceus.  The traditional attribution was to Benedetto Montagna (ca. 1480-1556), son and pupil of the more famous Bartolomeo Montagna (ca. 1450-1523).  Pouncey deprived Benedetto of this drawing and gave it to Bartolomeo, deploying his typical combination of technical and historical analysis in mutual reinforcement.    

Girolamo Muziano
Descent from the Cross
before 1592
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

"Traditionally attributed to Michelangelo.  Other attributions were to Jacopo Sansovino (Robinson) and Battista Naldini (Wilde).  Parker refers to Pouncey's emphatic opinion that the drawing is by Muziano, but catalogued it under the name of Naldini."  This was in 1957.  Since then, at some unknown point, the Ashmolean quietly dropped Parker's "official" attribution and adopted Pouncey's unofficial one.   

Girolamo Muziano
The Lamentation
ca. 1580
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The Louvre acknowledges that Pouncey only attributed The Lamentation to Muziano with clear and stated reservations.  No corresponding painting or print is known.  And the stylistic claims of numerous other artists have also been more or less plausibly advanced (Pontormo, Sebastiano del Piombo, Daniele da Volterra and Michelangelo among them).  Yet since Pouncey had successfully reclaimed such a wealth of other Louvre drawings from limbo, his inclination here toward the authorship of Muziano has remained in place.    

Cesare Nebbia
Fall of Simon Magus
ca. 1578-81
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Cesare Nebbia
Vision of Constantine
ca. 1578-81
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The pair of drawings attributed to Cesare Nebbia are studies for frescoes on the vault of the Gallery of Maps at the Vatican.  The project of decorating this space in the late 1570s and early 1580s involved sixteen artists, according to Baglione.  The parts played by individual artists in the creation of individual images within this large scheme is primarily a matter of hints and guesses – a game in which Pouncey participated with the requisite caution.  

Bartolomeo Neroni (il Riccio)
Two Heroic Figures from Antiquity
ca. 1550-55
drawing
Musée du Louvre

There are six sheets of these Heroic Figures at the Louvre, designed to be combined into a fresco frieze for a palace wall.  Pouncey assigned them to Bartolomeo Neroni, but the intended project has either disappeared without trace or was never executed.   

Avanzino Nucci
Aeneas in the Underworld (the Field of Tears)
ca. 1590-1600
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Avanzino Nucci
Arms of Pope Paul V Borghese
ca. 1610-20
drawing
British Museum

Pouncey's surviving draft of an unpublished article on Avanzino Nucci contains the following paragraph: "The reconstruction of a minor figure in the field of Roman Mannerism may seem hardly worth the effort even to those who do not take the view that this is a chapter in the history of art  which can be safely skipped.  Judged by his artistic value, Avanzino Nucci (1551-1629) perhaps hardly deserves the shortest of short notices.  But in art history, as in life, nuisance value is a factor to be reckoned with and it must be admitted that an artist like Avanzino who is not only prolific but is found competing or collaborating with more important painters is liable to prove a stumbling block to those who are not aware of his existence.  It seems, in short, desirable that enough of his work should be published to enable the student of the period to isolate him from his Mannerist colleagues."

Gregorio Pagani
Virgin and Child distributing Rosaries
to St Dominic and St Sebastian
ca. 1595
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"Attributed to Giovanni da San Giovanni until Pouncey proposed Pagani.  Ward-Jackson suggests that this is probably a modello for a lost picture described by Baldinucci: 'For Giovansimone Tornabuoni he made for Laiatico another painting of the rosary with all the mysteries; and it was this same Tornabuoni's idea that he should put the Virgin in a rose garden, with three trees; on the first, which was a palm, he showed the joyful mysteries; on the second, which was a thorn tree, the sorrowful ones; on the third, which was a rose-bush he represented the glorious mysteries, and in the self-same painting he put in angels and many figures of saints.  Amongst these was St. Sebastian.'"  

Giovanni Giacomo Pandolfi
St Basil baptizing an Old Man
ca. 1600
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Beginning in 1956, Pouncey worked to establish the identity of an artist whose drawings had either been assigned to other, better-known artists or had remained unidentified.  At first he used the designation Master of the Windsor Drawing.  Further research yielded the name of Giovanni Giacomo Pandolfi (ca. 1570-after 1635).

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Bearded Man standing in Profile
ca. 1526-27
drawing
British Museum

"This is a study, with many differences, for the figure of St. Joseph of Arimathaea in Parmigianino's etching of the Entombment, which probably dates from the painter's Roman period.  When acquired, the drawing was thought to be a copy after Parmigianino by the Bolognese painter Giuseppe Maria Mitelli.  The attribution to Mitelli, inscribed on the old mount, was based on the partly cut-away inscription on the drawing itself: . . . dal Sg Mitelli . . . ne in Roma 1688 Xbre.  Once Pouncey argued the case for Parmigianino's authorship, the Resta MS. catalogue was consulted, which stated that the drawing, by Parmigianino, was in fact presented to Resta by Mitelli some years earlier in 1682."

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Figure Study
ca. 1527
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey recorded that the drawing above was classified as School of Fontainebleau when he discovered it at the Louvre on 23 May 1960.  He dated it to the same period in Parmigianino's career as the Vision of St Jerome in the National Gallery.  

He encountered the drawing below, also at the Louvre, several years earlier, in 1952, another original Parmigianino, but this example, also hitherto anonymous, had been assigned to Lombard School since entering the museum during the French Revolution. 

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Virgin and Child
adored by Mary Magdalen and a Donor
ca. 1521-22
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Marco Pino
Holy Family with St Elizabeth
and young St John the Baptist
ca. 1555-57
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Formerly attributed to Federico Barocci, then demoted to Anonymous Italian.  Pouncey's attribution to Marco Pino in the early 1950s has remained unchallenged.  Catherine Goguel suggests that this may be a design for a chiaroscuro woodcut (either unexecuted or lost), several of which are known after drawings by Pino.