Showing posts with label murals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murals. Show all posts

Thursday, September 24, 2026

Italian Drawings Identified by Philip Pouncey

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
Head of a Woman
ca. 1617-23
drawing
Musée du Louvre
 
Philip Pouncey first suggested Domenichino as the author of this seeming portrait of a woman.  Lacking documentary evidence, he necessarily rested this view on technical similarities to documented autograph works.    

Dosso Dossi
St Luke painting the Virgin
ca. 1530
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Attributed to the School of Giulio Romano, but recognized by Pouncey as being by Dosso on 7 June 1956.  St. Luke is watched by St. Joseph as he draws the Virgin's head.  She is seated on a chair raised on steps with a curtain draped over the back.  St. Elizabeth stands beside her, looking on.  The composition is unusual and gives some idea of Dosso's studio practice and 'props'.  Pouncey's date of around 1530 is accepted by Mezzetti."

Pietro Faccini
Mystic Marriage of St Catherine
ca. 1590
drawing
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

"Attributed to Schedoni when it entered the Museum's collection, but recognised by Pouncey in 1969 as a 'very fine Faccini'.  Despite some abrasion it is clear that the drawing is an original; the combination of a very fine stipple technique for the figures with a broader handling of the landscape which gives an 'unfinished' effect can be paralleled in the sadly damaged Flaying of Marsyas in the Louvre."

Giovanni Antonio Fasolo
Design for Palace Mural
ca. 1555
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Drawings by Venetian painter Giovanni Antonio Fasolo are rare – which was one reason the Palace Mural drawing remained in the unidentified Italian file until Pouncey discovered it there in 1955.  He was able to recognize Fasolo's motifs, not through other drawings, but through his familiarity with fresco cycles in the palaces of the Veneto where Fasolo chiefly worked, along with his more famous master Giovanni Battista Zelotti.  

Ferraù Fenzoni
Penitent Magdalen
ca. 1612-14
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Found in the 'Anonymous Flemish' file, this drawing was recognized by Pouncey in 1959 as by Fenzoni.  Certain characteristics of technique are indeed reminiscent of Flemish precision, which goes some way to explain the old classification.  Like his contemporaries Andrea Lilio and Francesco Vanni, Ferraù Fenzoni maintained active ties in Rome with expatriate Flemish artists."     

Battista Franco (il Semolei)
Seated Youth
ca. 1552
drawing
British Museum

"The figure's close correspondence, in reverse, with the Jonah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel misled some nineteenth-century critics into attributing the drawing to Michelangelo; for Venturi's suggestion that it might be by Raphael there is not even a shadow of an excuse.  Popham's attribution in 1940 to Franco, a Venetian artist who was long active in Rome, was confirmed by Pouncey's subsequent observation that this is a study from a youthful model for the figure of Jupiter in the painting of Venus, Mercury and Jupiter in the Museo de Arte at Ponce, Puerto Rico – a painting which he was also the first to recognise as a characteristic work of Franco."

Lattanzio Gambara
Pyrrha and Deucalion
ca. 1570
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The successive attributions proposed for this Pyrrha and Deucalion, traditionally related to the Northern Italian Mannerism of Camillo Procaccini, are in themselves a description of the milieu in which Gambara worked, while the handwritten notes on the back of the mount reveal the step-by-step progress of the specialists: "Almost certainly by Camillo Boccacino" (Popham); "I would think close to Lattanzio Gambara" (Pouncey); "Certainly by Lattanzio Gambara" (Di Giampaolo).  The last of these concluded the case with the discovery of a corresponding fresco by Gambara in Palazzo Cimaschi in Brescia.    

Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi)
Portrait of a Youth
ca. 1505-1520
drawing
British Museum

"When in the collection of the Earl of Arundel, this drawing, then attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, was etched in reverse by Wenceslaus Hollar, without the halo or the letters.  It was ascribed to Leonardo in the Wellesley sale, and to the Milanese School of Leonardo in the Malcolm catalogue.  Soon after entering the British Museum, it was attributed to the Sienese artist Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, called Sodoma.  Popham's tentative attribution to Timoteo Viti, made about 1940, was superseded by Pouncy's attribution to Garofalo.  Pouncey remarked that the 'structure of the face corresponds fairly well with Costa's normal type, but the tendency to idealise and, moreover, the handling, point to an artist of the next generation.  The most likely author seems to be Garofalo whose early fresco on the ceiling of the Palazzo del Moro contains several heads similar in character.'"

Girolamo Genga
General and Army passing a River
ca. 1520
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Among the anonymous 16th-century Italian drawings at the Louvre until Pouncey discovered it in 1950 and recognized Girolamo Genga, as inspired by Luca Signorelli's groupings of nude antique figures in action.  

Girolamo Genga
Cavalry Battle in Landscape
ca. 1523-29
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pouncey identified Genga's Cavalry Battle as one of a series preparatory to a large-scale fresco project for Villa Imperiale at Pesaro.  He further compared the landscape depicted to the actual landscape around the Villa as viewed from the walls of Pesaro.  

Girolamo Genga
Mystic Marriage of St Catherine
ca. 1520
drawing
Musée du Louvre

This Mystic Marriage drawing was traditionally assigned to Giulio Romano, favored disciple of Raphael.  Obvious similarities to Giulio's work accounted for this opinion, but Pouncey dismissed it after considering details such as the relative scale of the figures, the qualities of their facial expressions, and the technique of wash application.  All these conformed better, in Pouncey's view, with an attribution to Girolamo Genga, and this was confirmed for him by a parallel drawing in a private Paris collection.  Both drawings related to a painting of the same subject in Rome, formerly credited to il Sodoma or his pupil Bartolomeo Neroni but recently shown by Popham to be Genga's.      

Girolamo Genga
Soldiers with Horseman
ca. 1522-25
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Recognized by Pouncey amongst the anonymous Italian drawings in September 1950.  This study is for the central group of the fresco decorating the ceiling of the Sala del Giuramento in the Villa Imperiale at Pesaro, showing the troops of Francesco Maria della Rovere swearing allegiance to him.  Genga was employed by Duke Francesco Maria I and later by Duke Guidobaldo II of Urbino on several architectural and decorative commissions from 1522 onwards." 

Giacinto Gimignani
Finding of Moses
ca. 1648
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Gimignani was a follower of Pietro da Cortona, working with him in the 1630s on the monumental ceiling fresco in Rome's Palazzo Barberini, Allegory of the Triumph of Divine Providence, a project cited as "the founding gesture of the Baroque Era."  Gimignani's manner post-Cortona drifted toward an earlier classicism.  Pouncey gave the Finding of Moses to Gimignani in the early 1950s, but not until the late 1970s was his opinion confirmed by other scholarship connecting the drawing to a fresco cycle for Pope Innocent X at Palazzo Pamphili.

Niccolò Giolfino
St Sebastian
before 1555
drawing
British Museum

"This drawing bore no attribution when acquired: the Veronese painter Niccolò Giolfino was suggested by Pouncey, and much to his satisfaction, the attribution was confirmed by the subsequent discovery of a photograph of the drawing as originally mounted on a page from the so-called 'second Moscardo Album' with the old inscription de m.o nicola d julfinj.  Old mounts are part of the history of drawings; but in the past restorers, commercial frame-makers and mount-cutters, and even some curators with an austere disapproval of 'prettification,' have thought nothing of discarding them." 

Girolamo da Carpi
Study of Antique Statue
ca. 1549-53
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Girolamo da Carpi
One of the Horae leading the Horses of the Sun
ca. 1544
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"This drawing, formerly 'School of Giulio Romano,' was identified by Pouncey and connected to a painted Aurora in the Dresden museum.  That painting, successively attributed to Garofalo and to a follower of Dosso Dossi, then to Girolamo da Carpi, is now believed to be the product of a collaboration at the ducal court of Ferrara.  Battista Dossi, who received payment for an Aurora in 1544, likely executed the painting following a conception by Girolamo, who produced the drawing." 

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Groups

George Segal
Rush Hour
1983
bronze
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri


Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi)
Abduction of the Sabine Women
ca. 1505
oil on panel
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Alex Webb
Wall Painting
(series, Mexican Border)
1978
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Jon Serl
Texas Scene
1975
oil on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Gustavo Simoni
Reception at the Prefecture
ca. 1902
ink and wash on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Arthur Segal
Untitled
1972
woodcut
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Caroline Walker
Theatre
2021
oil on linen
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Francesco Allegrini
Cavalry Skirmish
before 1663
drawing
British Museum

Ivan Shagin
The Sport Parade, Moscow, Red Square
1932
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Miron Sokole
Soldiers resting, Pacific Theater
before 1985
gouache on board
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Thomas Struth
Musée d'Orsay 1, Paris
1989
C-print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Ansel Adams
Store Room, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco
ca. 1933
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Gaspare Venturini
Allegory of the House of Este
1592-93
oil on canvas
Galleria Estense, Modena

John Sloan
Yeats at Petitpas
(Irish painter John Butler Yeats in New York with Ashcan School painters)
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Underwood and Underwood (New York)
The Famous Monk Gregory Rasputin
ca. 1916
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Jean Alaux
Nicolas Poussin presented to Louis XIII by Cardinal Richelieu
1832
oil on plaster (mural)
Musée du Louvre

Herbert Singleton
Glad You Dead You Rascal You
ca. 1990
painted cypress relief
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from Hundred-Gated Thebes

Where is now the loud acclaim?
Where the trample and the roll,
Shaking staid Earth like a mole?
Sunk to a rush's sigh! – Farewell,
Thou bleached wilderness o'erblown
By treeless winds, unscythable
Sandbanks, with peeping rocks bestrown,
That for thy barrenness seem'st to be
The bed of some retreated sea!

– George Darley (1835)

Monday, May 4, 2026

Terrace

Esther Tielemans
Mirrored Light Composition 2
2018
acrylic on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague


Terry Toedtemeier
Abert Rim, Lake County, Oregon
2005
inkjet print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Joel Sternfeld
Roosevelt Public School, Roosevelt, New Jersey
(with 1936 mural by Ben Shahn)
2005
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Félix Vallotton
Le Mont Blanc
1892
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Étienne Tournès
Woman drinking Coffee
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Hans Thoma
Forest Meadow
1876
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Carl Spitzweg
Old Gentleman on the Terrace
1875
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Octave Tassaert
Portrait of arts patron Alfred Bruyas
1852
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Octave Tassaert
Portrait of arts patron Alfred Bruyas
1852
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Giandomenico Tiepolo
The Last Supper
1752
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie in der Residenz, Würzburg

Johann Gottfried Thelott after Sebastiano Conca
Virgin and Child
ca. 1740
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Nicolas-Henri Tardieu after Jean-Antoine Watteau
Portrait of Watteau and arts patron Jean de Jullienne in a Garden
1731
etching and engraving
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Martin Tyroff
Dying Seneca
ca. 1730
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Lodewijk de Vadder
Landscape with Sunken Road
ca. 1640
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Valentin de Boulogne
Samson
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Claude Vignon
Lot and his Daughters
1625
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Domenico Tintoretto
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1590
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Shadows

Are they shadows that we see?
    And can shadows pleasure give?
Pleasures only shadows be,
    Cast by bodies we conceive,
        And are made the things we deem
        In those figures which they seem.

But these pleasures vanish fast,
    Which by shadows are expressed;
Pleasures are not, if they last,
    In their passing is their best.
        Glory is most bright and gay
        In a flash and so away.

Feed apace, then, greedy eyes
    On the wonder you behold;
Take it sudden as it flies,
    Though you take it not to hold.
        When your eyes have done their part
        Thought must length it in the heart.

– Samuel Daniel (1610)