Three Groups of Three Figures

Author: Albert Elen

This drawing is one of a group of three sheets, with the other two in the British Museum.^[1] Each depicts several small groups of people in discussion, and all drawings are executed on paper rubbed with red chalk. They are damaged fragments from a larger sheet and probably conserved in the first half of the eighteenth century when the paper was made up into a horizontal rectangular format with additions that give all sheets slightly different dimensions. The drawings are from the collection of Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745), as is evident from the old mounts, which have now been removed, and from corresponding annotations by the collector and his son and namesake (1694-1771) on the verso of the drawings. Each sheet also has Richardson’s collector’s mark on the recto. The drawing in Rotterdam became separated from the two London sheets during the sale of the Richardson collection in 1747.

Opinions as to the attribution and date of the present drawing vary considerably in the literature. Richardson gave them to Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497), as can be seen in the inscription on the recto of the former mount of the Rotterdam sheet. Richardson’s son mentioned the three drawings in his notes on a visit to Pisa Cathedral, referring to a painting by Gozzoli which he believed was related to them. He also noted this information on the versos of the old mounts.^[2] However, there is not the slightest connection with the Florentine artist.

According to Colvin (1907-1908), the three drawings are clearly by the same anonymous artist, possibly from Verona, and date from the early fifteenth century. Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944), on the other hand, regarded them as anonymous Venetian works and suggested a relationship to the first decorations by Antonio Veneziano (documented 1369-1419) in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace, which have not survived. Popham and Pouncey (1950) stated that the drawings are by an artist of the school of Verona and are copies after earlier work datable to the early fifteenth century. Given the presence of a doge in one of the London drawings and stylistic and typological similarities to drawings in a Livy manuscript (Ab urbe condita, folio 75) dated around 1372-73, Degenhart and Schmitt (1980) regard the three sheets as Venetian, c.1370-75.^[3] According to them, they may be preliminary drawings for a lost painting in the Palazzo Ducale or records of them.^[4]

Bert Meijer (in Venice/Florence 1985) rightly saw differences between the Rotterdam drawing and the two in London, particularly in their iconography and typology, and the limited use of parallel hatching. And indeed, there is no hatching behind the heads in the Rotterdam drawing and the figures are depicted in a strikingly more three-dimensional way, without the surfeit of hatching concealing the forms of the clothing in the two London drawings. In the Rotterdam sheet one is also struck by the looser, less hierarchic and asymmetrical juxtaposition of the figure groups, as well as the successful rear views of the three seated men on the left, with their faces in lost profile. In our opinion this displays a more advanced draughtsmanship that demands a later date, provisionally in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. The three drawings may be from a dispersed Venetian workshop stock of drawings by different hands, including those of pupils.

The small black chalk drawing of a male head with long hair on the verso – revealed by the removal of Richardson’s mount in 1995 – is of a far later date, probably the second half of the sixteenth century.