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| Francesco Salviati Virgin and Child with an Angel ca. 1535-40 oil on panel National Gallery of Canada |
"In formal terms, the sheer monumentality, weight and power of the figures that appear to be spread across the panel's surface deliberately recalls precedents that Salviati know from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. In particular, the Virgin's cross-legged pose references the Erythraean Sibyl. The treatment of the Virgin contains other notably secular, rather noble touches including her elongated neck, her elaborate headdress, and the daring placement of the shawl falling off her neck to reveal part of the shoulder. The scalloped draperies and creamy, polished surface seems to emulate marble sculpture in a manner that also evokes, as if in rivalry as much as emulation, Michelangelo."
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| Herman Posthumus Landscape with Antique Ruins 1536 oil on canvas Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
"This unusual painting, by the little-known Dutch painter Herman Posthumus, is an archaeological fantasy that reflects the passionate antiquarianism that prevailed in Rome during the reign of Paul III. In the foreground of Posthumus's painting, resting on a half-buried sarcophagus, a damaged tablet proclaims, in the words of Ovid, Ravenous Time and Envious Age destroy Everything. Scattered all around, in the shadows of ruined buildings and fountains, lie fragments of ancient sculptures, many of which can be identified today with works the artist saw in sixteenth-century collections."
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| Perino del Vaga Juno Visiting Aeolus, and Neptune calming the Tempest 1540 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
"In a letter of 4 February 1540 to the Roman medallist Alessandro Cesati, the humanist and poet Annibale Caro, future secretary to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, offered a lengthy and detailed description of a design he wished to have realized for the reverse of a portrait medal. Its subject, taken from Virgil's Aeneid, was Neptune calming the tempest that Aeolus, king of the winds, had summoned at the behest of Juno in order to defeat the Trojans. A design had already been presented by the gem engraver and medallist Giovanni Bernardi, but Caro confessed that he judged that submission so deficient as to be an embarrassment. For that reason he implored Cesati to furnish a sketch himself or to procure one from Perino del Vaga. Perino evidently obliged with the present drawing, the subject and composition of which conform precisely to Caro's medallic tableau, brilliantly incorporating every element of his overly ambitious conceit. . . . Caro's letter to Cesati dates from roughly the moment that Perino entered the service of the Farnese following his return to Rome, working first for il Gran Cardinale, Alessandro Farnese, and soon after for his grandfather, Pope Paul III [also an Alessandro Farnese]."
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| Perino del Vaga Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian Knot ca. 1545 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"One of the most important commissions of Perino's late career was the decoration of the papal apartments in the Castel Sant'Angelo. Its principal room is the monumental Sala Paolina, a grand gallery richly embellished with frescoes, gilded stucco, and feigned architectural elements, that served as the pope's official reception hall. . . . A number of preparatory drawings by Perino for the Sala Paolina survive. Among the most important is this study, executed in the appealing loose and fluid technique that characterizes his late graphic style."
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| Perino del Vaga Studies after the Antique ca. 1538-40 drawing Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario |
"Both sides of this drawing are devoted to copies after works from ancient Rome. In the seventeenth century, it was part of the Museo Cartaceo, the "Paper Museum" put together in Rome by the noted collector and antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo."
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| Perino del Vaga Design for a Mantelpiece for Pope Paul III ca. 1543-48 drawing Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario |
"Of Paul III's various artistic enterprises, the Kingston drawing is most likely to relate to his renovation of the Castel Sant'Angelo, even though no definitive connection has yet been discovered. . . . It is also possible that the drawing was intended for one of Paul III's domestic projects outside Rome, as yet unidentified."
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| Giulio Clovio Pietà ca. 1546-53 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
"Already attributed to Giulio Clovio at the time of its bequest to the Victoria & Albert Museum in the nineteenth century, this drawing reveals the artist's profound obsession with the art of Michelangelo. This image was engraved in reverse by the Mantuan printmaker Diana Scultori around 1575, but with the invention identified as Michelangelo's. The credit to Michelangelo was not misinformed as Clovio's sketch probably reproduces a now-lost drawing by the master."
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| Daniele da Volterra Bearded Man leaning against a wall ca. 1548-53 drawing British Museum |
"This drawing is a study for an Apostle in Daniele da Volterra's fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin on the altar wall of the della Rovere chapel in the church of the Trinità dei Monti, the main church of the recently founded order of Minims, or Frati Minimi of San Francesco. . . . The chapel's patron, Lucrezia della Rovere (1485-1552) had family ties to the Church of the Trinità dei Monti as the daughter of the pope's sister Luchina."
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| Marcello Venusti The Purification of the Temple after 1550 oil on panel National Gallery, London |
"Marcello Venusti's painted representation of Christ driving the money-changers and livestock vendors from the Temple in Jerusalem adheres faithfully to the biblical narrative. . . . Though not widely treated in religious iconography, this episode from the life of Christ gained prominence in the Counter-Reformation period, as it symbolized the purification of the Catholic Church. . . . The painting is directly related to a group of three sheets in the British Museum featuring a number of compositional sketches by Michelangelo. The most completely realized sketch [directly below] is the one that clearly served as the model for Venusti's painting. According to Tolnay, Michelangelo made the drawings for a fresco that was to have been executed in the Pauline Chapel, which would date them to about 1550."
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| Michelangelo Christ Purifying the Temple ca. 1550 drawing British Museum |
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| Jacopino del Conte Portrait of Bindo Altoviti ca. 1550-55 oil on panel Montreal Museum of Fine Arts |
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| Girolamo da Carpi Portrait of Bindo Altoviti ca. 1549-50 oil on marble private collection, New York |
"Born in 1491 to Dianora, daughter of Clarenza Cybo, the sister of Pope Innocent VIII, and to Antonio Altoviti, Bindo Altoviti took over the Roman family bank on his father's death in 1507, and despite his youth met with great success. When the Chigi bank closed in 1528, the Altoviti bank became the most powerful bank in Rome. Managing accounts for the Vatican, it also lent to Henry II of France and even to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, despite Bindo's own pro-Republican, increasingly anti-Medici sentiments. Indeed, Altoviti had funded the escape of the assassin (a Medici nephew of Bindo's own wife) of the repressive Duke Alessandro de' Medici in 1537. Nonetheless, he maintained a working relationship with Pope Clement VII de' Medici, as he had earlier with Leo X de' Medici. In 1531 and 1550 he was appointed Florentine Consul in Rome, and in 1546 (nominated by Duke Cosimo himself) a Senator of Florence. In 1552, Bindo imprudently recruited forces and funded Siena in its attempt to overthrow Medici rule, openly allying himself with Florentine exiles. Declared a traitor in 1554, his Florentine property and that of his wife were confiscated, and Cosimo was reputed to have sent agents to assassinate him in 1555. He died of natural causes in January 1556."
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| Prospero Fontana The Marriage Banquet of Peleus and Thetis ca. 1553-55 drawing British Museum |
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| Prospero Fontana The Marriage Banquet of Peleus and Thetis (left-hand fragment, detached) display of tableware with servants and infant satyr on the back of a tiger ca. 1553-55 drawing British Museum |
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| Francesco Salviati Victory ca. 1550-55 drawing National Gallery of Canada |
"The drawing appears to represent a seated allegorical female figure of Victory, as indicated by the classicising drapery, the sensual exposure of the underlying body, and the military references including a trophy of arms and a shield. Especially striking for its elaborative conception is the massive throne, decorated with a lion's head evoking the Old Testament throne of Solomon. In terms of style, the slow rhythms and ethereal, decorative quality of the drawing are characteristic of Salviati's later work. . . . The Ottawa study was presumably intended for a monumental framing figure to be executed in fresco in relation to a narrative scene, likely for a Roman palace commission. The drawing is best classified as a drapery study – the face and one of the arms are not even represented. The circulating quality of the fabric, which appears almost alive, is typical of Salviati's highly ornamental late style. The black chalk itself, applied mostly in close parallel lines, suggests the smoothness of a marble surface and betrays the artist's obsession with recreating (and rivaling) in his paintings the extreme polish and suppleness of Michelangelo's sculptures."
– quoted passages from a 2009 exhibition catalogue issued by the National Gallery of Canada – From Raphael to Carracci: The Art of Papal Rome, edited by David Franklin