Italian Drawings Identified by Philip Pouncey

Giovanni Bellini
Three Heads
before 1516
drawing
British Museum

Attributed to Francesco Bonsignori (ca. 1460-1519) until reattributed by Pouncey and Gere in their 1950 British Museum catalogue of Italian drawings.  Co-author J.A. Gere "observed the strong influence of Mantegna and has suggested that the drawing may have been inspired by a particular sort of Roman tomb relief in which a bust of the deceased appears alongside those of members of his family."

Giovanni Bellini
Head of a Man looking Up
before 1516
drawing
(fragment of cartoon, pricked for transfer)
British Museum

Traditionally attributed to Melozzo da Forlì (1438-94) until reattributed by Pouncey and Gere in their 1950 British Museum catalogue of Italian drawings. 

Jacopo Bertoia
Heads of Six Horses
ca. 1570
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

"The old attribution was to Perino del Vaga,  The present attribution was given by Pouncy in 1955.  It has been suggested that there may be some relation to the fighting horses in the background of a painting of the Rape of the Sabines in the Museo Civico, Bologna, anciently attributed to Girolamo Mirola, a close associate of Bertoia whose personality is still somewhat of a mystery."

Giovanni Battista Barbiani
The Holy Trinity welcoming St Benedict and St Scholastica
ca. 1595-1600
drawing
(study for altarpiece)
Musée du Louvre

Philip Pouncey made regular post-war consulting visits to the Louvre.  Late in his career he identified the maker of this previously anonymous drawing as Barbiani by comparing the work with a reproduction of a painted altarpiece housed obscurely in an abbey in Cesena.  That painting was documented as by Giovanni Battista Barbiani, and the drawing was shown to be his study for it.  Pouncey's paper image-files stimulated and nourished his talent for recalling and comparing images mentally, though only a minority of cases involved this sort of direct one-to-one correspondence.    

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
Portrait of a Young Man
before 1516
drawing
Musée du Louvre

When this portrait drawing entered the Louvre in 1671 it was held to be by Leonard da Vinci himself.  Over the years it gradually sank to "School of Leonardo" and then "Anonymous Italian 16th century" – Pouncey made the case for a particular one of Leonardo's followers, basing Boltraffio's authorship on details of physiognomy in several of his painted portraits, but also on less tangible psychological qualities.  

 

Francesco Allegrini
Seated Woman
before 1663
drawing
(study for figure of Juno in ceiling fresco)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Giovanni Baglione
Slaying of Leo, Emperor of the Armenians
ca. 1610-12
drawing
British Museum

Baglione's preparatory drawing – for a surviving ceiling fresco in S. Maria Maggiore, Rome – was donated to the British Museum in 1993 as a memorial to Philip Pouncey.  The National Art Collections Fund participated in the gift which originated with Julien Stock of Sotheby's in London, an organization that frequently relied on Pouncey's advice.    

Giovanni Baglione
Christ on the Cross
flanked by the Virgin and St John the Evangelist
ca. 1600
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The Louvre catalogue describes Baglione's Crucifixion sketch as unconnected to any known Baglione painting, crediting Pouncey's identification of the artist in this case to specific eccentricities of technique observable in common with those in well-documented drawings.  The artist is characterized as an elusive magpie, appropriating a variety of stylistic elements without transforming or combining them.  This can be observed even in a sample as small as the four Baglione drawings (from four different institutions) lined up here, none of which seems to resemble any of the others.   

Giovanni Baglione
Miracle of St Andrea Corsini
ca. 1629
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Pouncey saw the Miracle of St Andrea Corsini for sale at Christie's in 1977 – credited only to 'Roman School, 17th century' – and bought it for his personal collection, recognizing the hand as Baglione's. "He later presented it to the Fitzwilliam in commemoration of the exhibition held there in his honour in 1985."   

Giovanni Baglione
Study of Two Young Women
ca. 1609
drawing
Fondation Custodia, Paris

Baglione's drawing of two young women (or of the same woman drawn twice) was attributed to Jacopo da Empoli (1551-1640) when Pouncey examined it in 1955.  He then reassigned it to Baglione, an opinion confirmed by subsequent scholarship.   

Francesco Brizio
St Cecilia
ca. 1604-1605
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey recognized this Brizio drawing at the Louvre as a bozzetto for one of the ruined frescoes in the cloister of the Bolognese church, San Michele in Bosco.  These were executed by a group of artists working under Ludovico Carracci.  The paintings subsequently fell into such neglect as to become effectively illegible.  Yet the program can be largely reconstructed from preparatory drawings like this one and from prints made at the time.   

Michelangelo Anselmi
Group of Six Angels
ca. 1532-35
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anselmi's angels in the Louvre were linked by Pouncey in 1952 to a corresponding group of angels in a British Museum drawing – both tied to a group of comparable angels supporting clouds in a documented Anselmi painting.  Pouncey speculated that the artist may have frescoed the present angels as a frieze in a chapel Vasari reported him decorating in Parma.  That work was destroyed in 1812, leaving few known traces.   

Lazzaro Baldi
Death of Virginia
(slain by her centurion-father to avoid dishonor)
ca. 1650-60
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The collector Everhard Jabach sold a vast collection of drawings, now in the Louvre, to Louis XIV in 1671.  Baldi's Death of Virginia had been produced not long before this sale was made, yet it remained in the Louvre's 'anonymous Italians' file for the following three centuries – until Philip Pouncey linked it to a post-mortem inventory listing a series of drawings Baldi had produced for sale on the theme of well-known murders in the antique world, essentially a pretext for costume dramas with classical settings.  

Giovanni Balducci
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1580
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The Raising of Lazarus was long known to correspond with a chapel fresco in the crypt of Basilica di San Marco in Florence.  That chapel was embellished by a number of Florentine artists around 1580, led by Balducci's master, Giovanni Battista Naldini.  The Louvre drawing was by extension assumed by generations of scholars to belong to Naldini.  Pouncey showed that both drawing and painting exhibit weaknesses in technique that apply to Balducci but not to Naldini or his other collaborators.    

Domenico Beccafumi
Standing Woman
ca. 1517
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Beccafumi's study of a draped woman remained an unidentified Italian work until Pouncey located the painted figure it had been designed for – appearing in Beccafumi's fresco of The Marriage of the Virgin in Siena's Oratory of the Compagnia di San Bernardino.  Of course by itself such a match between a drawing and a painting cannot prove that the one preceded and contributed to the other.  Numberless surviving drawings are copies after rather than studies before.  Scholars over time have developed fairly nuanced methods to distinguish such differences.

Baccio Bandinelli after Michelangelo
Head of a Young Man
ca. 1520-25
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Baldassare Peruzzi created the Head of Young Man according to the 17th-century inventory when this drawing arrived at the Louvre.  Later Peruzzi was dropped and it became Florentine School.  Next, it was assigned to Michelangelo's devoted disciple Daniele da Volterra.  In 1955 Pouncey expressed the opinion that "les traits et la touche sont plus grossiers que chez Daniele," and proposed the less dexterous Bandinelli, a suggestion that has since gained general acceptance.