A Rider Facing Right

Author: Rosie Razzall

This drawing is one of four sheets in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen by the artist known as Pseudo-Pacchia, who was active in Siena around 1530.^[1] This name was given to the artist by the art historian Philip Pouncey in the 1950s on the basis that his drawings bear some similarity to those of Girolamo Pacchia (c.1477-after 1533), as well as other Sienese artists such as Giovanni Antonio Sodoma (1477-1549) or, more loosely, Domenico Beccafumi (1484-1551).^[2] However nothing else about the artist is known; only the dispersed survival of a number of sheets in several collections that all appear to be by the same hand, with many of them belonging to the same sketchbook. Sixteen of these sheets were sold in the H.S. Reitlinger sale in 1953.^[3] The Rotterdam sheets may also have come from the same sketchbook, which would therefore have already been dismantled by the time the pages were bought by Franz Koenigs between 1920 and 1930.^[4] Other sheets probably from the same sketchbook include three pages in London,^[5] one in New York,^[6] one in Chicago,^[7] one in Brussels,^[8] one last seen in Pouncey’s collection,^[9] and at least seven on the art market.^[10] Many of them, like the Rotterdam sheets, are in poor condition and have suffered losses across the sheet or its edges. Several have page numbers written in the upper corner in pen and ink, the highest of which is 87.^[11] There are therefore probably many other unknown pages from this sketchbook either lost or yet to come to light.

The subjects in the Pseudo-Pacchia drawing book are mainly figure and head studies in pen and ink, copies after classical and contemporary sculpture, warriors on horseback and fighting swordsmen, and some studies of ornaments.^[12] Given the repetition of several motifs and the filling of many pages with several unrelated studies, the sketchbook probably served as a place to make free studies and copies, to repeat ideas in new variations, and to make reference notes for future use. Three out of the four Rotterdam drawings have been drawn on both sides of the sheet. This drawing shows a male rider in sixteenth-century dress, holding the reins of his horse. Men on horseback also appear on I 501 verso and I 504, as well as on the verso of the drawing in New York. On the verso of the Rotterdam drawing is a study of a male nude holding a rectangular object, perhaps a book or tablet. Although the figure has no head, the page has probably been cut down by about 40 mm, based on the typical dimensions of the other known sketchbook pages (c. 290 x 210 mm). The figure’s legs have also been coloured in with red chalk, apparently to imagine how the figure would appear once dressed.