Drapery Study

Author: Esmé van der Krieke

This drawing is one of the few in the museum’s collection still on an old mount. It was added together with the inscription ‘Titiano’, by the art collector Jonathan Richardson senior (1665-1745).^[1] The provenance of the drawing goes further back to the seventeenth-century English artist Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680). With some 3,000 sheets, he owned one of the most prominent collections of drawings of his time. By far the greater part of this collection consisted of figure and drapery studies by Italian artists. Lely collected them not solely because of their artistic quality, but also as study material for pupils who could use them to copy in his workshop.^[2] It is tempting to think that our drawing might also have served this purpose.

Our sheet is a drapery study seen from the front; the start of a neck and sleeves and the rounding of hips can also be recognized. The combination of black chalk and white heightening that contrast with the blue ground of the paper create a three-dimensional effect in the folds of the cloak. When Franz Koenigs acquired the sheet in 1929, it was attributed to Titian (1488/1490-1576). Tietze and Tietze-Conrat thought that the simple, yet at the same time accurate depiction of the drapery was typical of this artist, although they also suggested that the drawing could have been done by someone in his vicinity.^[3] Attributions of studies like this, lacking the context of a larger composition, are often difficult to pin down. The technique and the use of blue paper, moreover, are characteristic of mainly Venetian artists in general and not typical properties of one specific artist. Not only are there comparable drawings by Titian, like the one in Florence,^[4] but also drawings by for instance Paris Bordone (1500-1571) or Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) have elements in common with the Rotterdam sheet. From now on, we are consequently classifying the drawing more generally than was previously the case, and locate the sheet in Venice in the second half of the sixteenth century.