Mars Seated

Author: Rosie Razzall

Apart from a handful of perspective drawings included in his treatise on painting,^[1] there are no other drawings that survive by the Tuscan painter Piero della Francesca (1412-1492). However, art historians in the early twentieth century made hopeful attempts to attribute drawings to him, of which this sheet is one example. In the 1929 Russell sale, the lot entry for this drawing reads: ‘The late Mr Charles Loeser was the first to identify this drawing as a work of this great master, an attribution which has since been generally endorsed by scholars. It is believed to be the only extant drawing by the artist, and is accordingly of the utmost rarity and importance.’^[2] Charles Alexander Loeser (1864-1928), an American collector and scholar based in Florence, is also responsible for attributing a drawing now in New York^[3] to the same artist, as well as a drawing at Harvard.^[4] Loeser’s friend, the art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959), agreed with the attribution of the Rotterdam drawing to Piero della Francesca in 1961,^[5] but none of these three drawings is accepted as being by his hand today. While the New York drawing remains at least in Piero’s circle, the attribution of the Rotterdam drawing remains uncertain.

As the inscription ‘Marte’ on the left makes clear, the drawing shows the figure of Mars. He wears a helmet, holds a sword in his right arm and leans against an oval shield with his left arm. He is seated on his breastplate, as becomes clearer when the sheet is viewed from the verso where the outlines have been pricked. The pen and ink lines are not particularly skilled, and a few highlights have been added with white heightening. The dark grey wash ground and scratchy pen and ink may have led Degenhart and Schmitt to suggest that the drawing belonged to the circle of Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) and Giovanni Bellini (c.1430-1516) towards the end of the fifteenth century or early sixteenth.^[6] Forlani Tempesti placed the drawing later than the New York and Harvard sheets, without specifying an attribution or region,^[7] while a handwritten note on the Lütjens inventory suggests an attribution to Ferrara.^[8] Bert Meijer suggested a much later attribution to Bernardo Castello (1557-1629). There are a number of drawings of personifications on blue paper in Paris^[9] that were previously attributed to Castello by Philip Pouncey, but the handling of pen and ink and white heightening is much more sophisticated than that in the present sheet. Other drawings by Castello do not correspond in style and technique, so an earlier date for the drawing is maintained here.

The Lütjens inventory also records the square black stamp, partially cut off at the lower right corner of the sheet, as the collector’s mark of Paul Sandby (1731-1809), L. 2112. However, the remains of the stamp do not correspond to that mark, and it must belong to another collector.