Dead Jay (Garrulus glandarius)

Author: Gert Jan van der Sman

This drawing on parchment from the former Koenigs Collection has an attribution to Jacopo de’ Barbari, but has never been remarked on by art historians. It is one of the very few ‘non-German drawings’ restituted by Ukraine to the Netherlands in 2004, along with no fewer than 134 sheets by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German artists.

The attribution to Jacopo de’ Barbari is based on its affinity with the famous drawing of a dead grey partridge that is held in London (c.1504).^[1] That study was made in watercolour on paper, with great attention to the subtle grey and brown shades of the plumage. But whereas the London drawing has a certain transparency that derives from the extremely fine brushwork, the present drawing is heavier in design and execution. Several factors contribute to this: the support (parchment instead of paper), the dark background, the white priming in the foreground and the quite strong dark patches on the jay’s head and left wing.

To date, there are no known drawings on parchment by Jacopo de’ Barbari, which means that the present sheet should be attributed to the artist with a degree of caution. The light and dark contrasts suggest the same. Nevertheless, there are style elements that link the drawing in Rotterdam with the work in London, particularly the use of parallel hatching on the jay’s breast.^[2] We find hatching of this kind in the shadow passages in the drawing in London. The arrangement of the picture space is also similar; as Jacopo de’ Barbari accentuated the vertical central axis in the London drawing, so here the emphasis is on the horizontal axis. Lastly, the use of colour in the Rotterdam drawing resembles De’ Barbari’s trompe-l’oeil painting Still Life with a Partridge and an Iron Glove in Munich, for which the sheet in London is probably a preliminary study.^[3]

In his dissertation on Jacopo de’ Barbari, Jay Levenson suggested that De’ Barbari made a number of studies of dead birds during his stay in Germany.^[4] The sheet from the Koenigs Collection may point in that direction. The artist chose here a pictorial finish so that the drawing could also serve as a work of art in its own right.