Head of Christ with the Crown of Thorns

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Specifications

Title	Head of Christ with the Crown of Thorns
Material and technique	Pen and brush and brown ink, heightened with white, on grey prepared paper
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 190 mm Width 185 mm
Artists	Draughtsman: Anoniem : Francesco Francia (Francesco Raibolini)
Accession number	I 200 (PK)
Credits	Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), 1940
Department	Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date	1940
Creation date	in circa 1500
Watermark	not possible to determine, poor visibility, (vH, ?P (mount: vH, 6P))
Inscriptions	'k:34' (below centre, pen and brown ink); [...] ('upc'?) (verso, upper right, pencil), 'EE.54.' (idem, upper right, pen and brown ink), 'J.B. N: 155. 7 1/2 square' (idem, centre right, pen and brown ink), 'Born in Bologna An. 1450 [...] 1578' (centre, pen and brown ink and pencil), 'E. collectione Dni: Domini Joh. Somers' (below centre, pen and brown ink); 'Fran[ces]co Francia' (on removed Somers/Richardson mount, below centre, pen and brown ink, by J. Richardson), 'Christ crowned with thorns' (idem, below centre, pencil); 'es ven' (idem, below centre, pencil)
Collector	Collector / Franz Koenigs
Mark	G. M. Marchetti, bishop of Arezzo (L.2911 deest), J. Lord Somers (L.2981, inv. k. 34), J. Richardson Sr (L.2995, though not in his own coll.), both on the removed Somers/Richardson mount
Provenance	The collection of drawings (2638 sheets in 16 albums, this sheet in Album K, no. 32 #attribution) formed by Padre Sebastiano Resta (1635-1714, L.2992 deest) for Giovanni Matteo Marchetti, bishop of Arezzo (L.2911); John Lord Somers (L.2981: inv. 'k. 32', on a mount by J. Richardson Sr)*, acquired with the Marchetti Collection from Marchetti's cousin, the Cavaliere Marchetti of Pistoia, in 1710; John Barnard (1685-1764, L.1420), London; his sale, London (Greenwood) 16-23.02.1787, probably eighth night, in lot 14 (F. Francia, BP 0/5/0, to 'Smith T'); - ; Franz W. Koenigs (1881-1941, L.1023a), Haarlem, acquired in 1927 (North Italian, c. 1500); D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955), Rotterdam, acquired with the Koenigs Collection in 1940 and donated to Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Exhibitions	Venice/Florence 1985, no. 16
Research	Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600
Literature	Aikema/Meijer 1985, no. 16, ill. (Venetian school, c. 1500); Ruggeri 1985, p. 235; Pizzoni 2020, p. 156
Material	Paper > Vegetable material > Organic material > Material > Material and technique Paintbrush > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique Brown ink > Ink > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique
Object	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Geographical origin	Italy > Southern Europe > Europe

Entry catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600

Author: Esmé van der Krieke

Devotional images of Christ with the Crown of Thorns most likely originated in the thirteenth century, but they became increasingly popular towards the end of the fifteenth. At the centre of these depictions is Christ’s Passion, and to help their viewers to imagine themselves close to the scene, Italian artists pictured a very lifelike head.^[1]In our drawing, Christ appears with his lips closed and a slightly downcast gaze, the eyes turned to the left. The head is rendered in thin, subtle lines. Heavier accents in the beard and the long hair provide chiaroscuro contrasts. With white heightening, the crown of thorns stands out against the rest of the face. The detailed and lifelike drawing was probably a work in its own right or a finished study for a devotional setting.

Discolouration around the nose, damaged areas in the paper near the neck and the shoulder, and the cropped triangular shape of the sheet show that the condition of the drawing has suffered. It has an impressive provenance and belonged to several renowned collectors, Padre Sebastiano Resta (1635-1714), John Somers (1650-1716) and John Barnard (1685-1764) among them. The drawing has been removed from the eighteenth-century mount that Jonathan Richardson Sr (1665-1745) had made for it, and which is still held in the museum.^[2]

Resta kept his collection of drawings in albums and added an extended description of the maker of each sheet, information that Richardson copied onto his new mounts. As a result, we know that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century the drawing was attributed to the Bolognese artist Francesco Francia (1447/1450-1517).^[3]When Franz Koenigs acquired the sheet in 1927, however, the attribution had been revised to anonymous Northern Italian. Aikema and Meijer likewise failed to recognize a specific artist in the drawing and placed the anonymous maker in Venice around 1500.^[4]Since no further leads about this intriguing sheet can be found, we join Aikema and Meijer.

Footnotes

^[1]Morse 2018, pp. 128-29.

^[2]For more information about the collectors Padre Resta, John Somers and Jonathan Richardson see under ‘collectors’ marks’ in this online catalogue.

^[3]The inscription ‘k:34’ on the recto of the drawing refers to number 34 in the Resta album K, the original of which is held in the British Library. For the attributions in this album see also Popham 1936, p. 9.

^[4]Aikema/Meijer 1985, no. 16.

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Entry catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600

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Anoniem

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