Italian Drawings Identified by Philip Pouncey

Girolamo Siciolante
Triumph of King Pepin
ca. 1560-65
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Discovered by Pouncey under the name of Santi di Tito in the early 1950s and recognized as a study for Siciolante's painting in the Sala Regia in the Vatican.  The drawing was formerly owned by Vasari, who annotated it.  

Girolamo Siciolante
Man in a Cloak
ca. 1549-50
drawing
British Museum

"When acquired by the British Museum in the 1940s the drawing was attributed to Daniele da Volterra.  The attribution to Siciolante, put forward by Pouncey in 1954, was subsequently confirmed by his observation that this is a study for the Apostle in the centre foreground of the Assumption of the Virgin in the semi-dome of the Fugger Chapel (third on the right) in S. Maria dell'Anima, Rome.  The position of the figure's head is different in the painting, but the drapery corresponds in every detail.  The drawing was evidently made from a studio model."

Girolamo Siciolante
Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints
ca. 1547-48
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The Louvre catalogue remarks on how "astonishing" it seems that Pouncey had to be the one to reveal in 1950 that the longstanding museum attribution of this drawing to Garofalo was wrong, considering that the true artist's name was plainly written on the back of the sheet when it entered the collection in the 17th century.  It is the modello for Siciolante's altarpiece in the church of San Martino Maggiore in Bologna. 

Girolamo Siciolante
Virgin and Child enthroned
with St Peter and St Stephen
ca. 1541
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Formerly credited to Raffaellino del Colle, later to Roman School, this is a study for Siciolante's altarpiece painted for the Abbazia dei Santi Pietro e Stefano di Valvisciolo and now hanging in Palazzo Caetani in Rome.  

Vincenzo Tamagni
Three Standing Figures
before 1530
drawing
(formerly owned by Giorgio Vasari)
British Museum

"In 1946 this drawing prompted one of Pouncey's first articles.  Vasari's attribution to Tamagni (to whom he refers as Vincenzo da S. Gimignano Pittore on the mount) enabled Pouncey to reattribute the related fresco of St. Catherine Healing Matteo di Cenni in the Oratory of the Contrada dell'Oca, Siena, to Tamagni.  Although Oskar Fischel had previously connected the British Museum drawing with the fresco, he believed the drawing to be by Girolamo del Pacchia, to whom the fresco had been traditionally given, along with others from the same cycle.  Pouncey rightly contrasted the 'quaint, countrified manner' of Tamagni's Healing of Matteo di Cenni with the more up-to-date rendering of the other frescoes by Pacchia."

Pellegrino Tibaldi
Head of a Youth
1549
drawing
British Museum

"As Pouncey was the first to suggest, this is a fragment of a cartoon or full-size modello for the Adoration of the Shepherds, signed and dated 1549, in the Borghese Gallery, Rome.  The drawing corresponds with the head and hand of the youthful shepherd on the extreme right of the painted composition, though there are some differences in the position of the fingers.  Another fragment of the same cartoon is also in the British Museum, and a third in the Uffizi."

Pellegrino Tibaldi
Joseph released from Prison
ca, 1554-61
drawing
British Museum

"Pouncey's attribution to Tibaldi based on comparison with such paintings as the Visitation in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino and the Decollation of the Baptist in the Brera, Milan, was confirmed by David McTavish's observation that this is a preparatory study for one of the ten frescoes in Tibaldi's cycle illustrating the Story of Joseph, formerly in the Palazzo Ferretti in Ancona and now detached and in a private collection in Switzerland.  Tibaldi's activity in Ancona is documented over the period 1554-61, the approximate date of the two pictures cited by Pouncey in support of his attribution."

Alessandro Turchi
St Lawrence preaching that the Poor
are the Treasure of the Church
ca, 1605-10
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Vanni
Blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni before Pope Clement IV
ca. 1596-97
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"The scene shows the Blessed Ambrogio pleading for the removal of the interdict which had been placed on Siena by Pope Clement IV (30 January 1266).  Vanni painted a lunette of the same subject in the Sala del Consiglio of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena."    

Giovanni de' Vecchi
Religion distributing Girdles of St Francis to Penitents
ca. 1585
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

"The subject commemorates the inauguration on 19 November 1585 of the Confraternity of the Girdles of St Francis by Pope Sixtus V (the figure kneeling in front of the pedestal to the right).  Religion, enthroned in the centre, receives with her right hand the girdles given her by St. Francis, who kneels on clouds above her; she holds in her left hand a sceptre crowned by the badge of the Order (two arms crossed).  The drawing was formerly attributed to Agostino Carracci, probably because of its connection with his signed engraving of the composition, dated 1586, which shows only slight differences of detail.  In spite of the connection with the engraving, Pouncey rightly doubted the attribution of the Edinburgh drawing, noticing that the overall handling was typical of de' Vecchi's style.  His observation called into question the assumption that Carracci was responsible for the design of the engraving, which is sometimes thought to be his." 

Timoteo Viti
Allegorical Composition
ca. 1501-1503
drawing
Musée du Louvre

This figure group was thought to be by Leonardo da Vinci when it entered the Louvre in the 1790s.  Pouncey first saw it in 1959 and made the suggestion of Timoteo Viti, one of the lesser-known figures in the orbit of Raphael – a suggestion that has so far remained unchallenged. 

Federico Zuccaro
Baptism of the Centurion
ca. 1580
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey connected both the drawing above and the one below to Federico Zuccaro's frescoes in the Cappella Paolina in the Vatican.

Federico Zuccaro
Vision of St Peter at Joppa
ca. 1580
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Taddeo Zuccaro
Angels in Clouds
ca. 1563-65
drawing
(study for ceiling fresco)
British Museum

Taddeo Zuccaro
Group of Four Muses
ca. 1557-59
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Traditionally attributed to Daniele da Volterra and later classified as Anonymous Florentine.  Pouncey recognised that it was by Taddeo Zuccaro before April 1953.  J.A. Gere pointed out that this is a study for the group in the left foreground of the fresco of The Muses round the Castalian Spring, which Zuccaro painted on the loggetta vault of the garden house at Palazzo Bufalo near the Trevi Fountain." 

Jacopo Zucchi
Aesculapius as Allegory of Medicine
before 1596
drawing
British Museum

Italian Drawings Identified by Philip Pouncey

Biagio Pupini after Raphael
Virgin and Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1540-50
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Jabach's attribution to Pupini h ad been discarded and forgotten when Pouncey found this drawing under Raphael's school in the Louvre.  At first he considered an attribution to Bagnacavallo, with whom Pupini is first documented as receiving a joint commission to paint the chapel of the high altar in S. Maria delle Grazie in Faenza, but he concluded it was by Pupini on 13 August 1959.  As so often in Pupini's work there is a reference to Raphael and here the composition clearly depends on the Alba Madonna."

Biagio Pupini after Raphael
Virgin and Child
with St John the Baptist and St Joseph
ca. 1540-50
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Biagio Pupini
Feast of the Gods
ca. 1519-24
drawing
Musée du Louvre

This study was auctioned as by Giovanni Francesco Penni in 1785 with the assurance that it came from the Mariette and Crozat collections.  The image was claimed by the seller to have been frescoed by Penni on the ceiling of a banqueting room in Rome's Palazzo Farnese, but this was not true.  Someone in the Louvre at some later point decided that Giulio Romano was a likelier candidate.  The drawing was still in Giulio's file when Pouncey found it.   

Raffaellino da Reggio
Martyrdom of St Dorothy
before 1578
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Recognized by Pouncey among the anonymous Italian drawings on 23 May 1952.  No related painting is known, but a rougher, and presumably earlier, sketch for the same composition is in the Museo Civico in Reggio Emilia."

Raffaellino del Garbo
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
before 1524
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The drawing of Judith entered the Louvre as by Timoteo Viti.  Early in the twentieth century the famous connoisseur Bernard Berenson persuaded the Louvre to adopt an attribution to Giovanni Antonio Sogliani.  Pouncey's influence at the Louvre is illustrated by the fact that his attribution to Raffaellino del Garbo was accepted in defiance of the august Berenson, who was still living.  

Raphael
Phrygian Sibyl
ca. 1511
drawing
British Museum

"The drawing passed in about 1906-7 from the 8th Duke of Rutland to the dealers Wildenstein, London, and remained in their possession until its appearance at an exhibition on their premises in 1953.  It was bought by H.J. Calmann, then a leading dealer in Old Master drawings in London, who in turn sold it to the Museum.  The decision to acquire this drawing would have been made by the Trustees, acting on a request from Popham supported by Pouncey.  It closely corresponds with the painted figure of the Sibyl on the right of the arch in the Chigi Chapel in S. Maria della Pace, Rome, decorated by Raphael about 1511-12 for the banker Agostino Chigi."   

Giovanni Battista Ricci
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1597
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Assigned to Baldassare Peruzzi on entering the Louvre in the 1790s.  Reassigned to Ricci in 1957 by Pouncey.  There is a parallel study, Adoration of the Shepherds, in Teylers Museum, Haarlem.  Both relate to frescoes painted by Ricci in San Marcello al Corso, Rome.

Giovanni Battista della Rovere
Design for trompe-l'oeil ceiling with the Assumption of Virgin
ca. 1600
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Le rôle de Philip Pouncey, dès les années 1950, dans la reconnaissance de certains artistes et la clarification des attributions, a été d'une portée considérable, assurant à la recherche ultérieure des fondements solides.  Ce fut le cas en ce qui concerne les frères Giovanni Battista et Giovanni Mauro della Rovere, des artistes problématiques de la fin du XVIᵉ siècle, dont les œuvres n'étaient pratiquement pas distinguées, et dont les dessins se trouvaient fréquemment attribués à Ricci, Nebbia et Passignano, ou confondus avec ceux des plus grands noms de la peinture lombarde – Procaccini, Cerano, Crespi – et cela bien que l'immédiateté de leur langage paraisse fort éloignée de l'extrême subjectivité de celui de ces artistes."

Francesco Salviati
Charity, Fortitude, Hope, Faith
1544
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"Pouncey connected this to the soprapporta on the south wall of the Sala dell'Udienza of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence."  

Orazio Samacchini
Flying Angel among Cherubs
ca. 1576-77
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Samacchini's Angel was shown to be a preparation for fresco-work in one of the octagonal compartments ornamenting the vault of Chiesa di Sant'Abbondio in Cremona. 

Orazio Samacchini
The Trinity
ca. 1568-69
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Samacchini's Trinity corresponds in reverse to an altarpiece formerly in the church of the Santissima Trinità in Bologna.  Several sketches made in preparation for this altarpiece also survive, all oriented in the same direction as the painting, with this drawing alone reversed.  The puzzle of this reversal was solved with the discovery of a reproductive engraving of the altarpiece made by Domenico Tibaldi shortly after the painting was finished.  Samacchini's high-finish drawing must, it was reasoned, also have been made after the completion of the painting, intended to serve as modello for the print. 

Maso da San Friano (Tommaso Manzuoli)
Coronation of the Virgin with Six Saints
before 1571
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Yet another drawing correctly identified by the 17th-century collector Everhard Jabach, then mis-identified at the Louvre for the next three hundred years, then patiently corrected by the ever-present Pouncey.  

Andrea del Sarto
Head of a Young Boy
ca. 1529
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Previously attributed to Federico Zuccaro, but recognised by Pouncey in 1953 as a study for the head of the Infant John the Baptist in Sarto's Holy Family painted ca. 1529 for Ottaviano de' Medici and now in the Pitti Palace, Florence. 

Sebastiano del Piombo
Standing Figure
ca. 1517-19
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey discovered this sheet among the anonymous Italians in 1952, a study for the central figure in The Martyrdom of St Agatha by Sebastiano del Piombo.  Ercole Rangone commissioned the painting in 1517 to mark his own elevation to Cardinal.  It is now in the Galleria Palatina, Florence. 

Vespasiano Strada
Martyrdom of St Felician of Foligno
ca. 1598
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey identified this drawing by comparing it to a pair of signed frescoes representing the capture and martyrdom of St. Felician.  These survive within the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the Duomo de Foligno.

Bernardo Strozzi
Betrothal Scene
ca. 1623-25
oil paint on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

"Purchased as 'Ascribed to Velasquez' in 1923 and attributed by Parker, with some hesitation, to Jacopo da Empoli.  Parker rightly dismisses any connection with the famous painting in the collection of Lord Elgin of The Marriage of Caterina de' Medici, but conjectures that it might well be one of a series leading up to a marriage scene similar to that just mentioned.  The attribution to Strozzi was put forward by Pouncey in March 1969.  It is close in style and handling to the bozzetto in the collection of Denis Mahon of Horatius Cocles defending the Bridge, which is documented in the years 1623-25.  A similar date is proposed for th present bozzetto."

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."

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.