Mercury with Pegasus

Copy after: Andrea Mantegna (in circa 1700-1800)

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Specifications

Title	Mercury with Pegasus
Material and technique	Pen and brown ink, pen and red ink
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 172 mm Width 119 mm
Artists	Copy after: Andrea Mantegna Maker: Anoniem
Accession number	MB 946 (PK)
Credits	Gift P. Cloix, 1908
Department	Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date	1908
Creation date	in circa 1700-1800
Watermark	none (vV, 6P)
Inscriptions	'550' (recto, upper right, pencil)
Provenance	P. Cloix, major of Montigny sur Loing, donated 1908
Research	Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600
Literature	Schmidt-Degener 1907, pp. 285-295, no. 2, ill. (2 dessins inedits de Mantegna); Paton 1908, p. 129, ill. (Mantegna); Jaarverslag 1908, pp. 18-19, ill.; cat. 1921, no. 570; cat. 1925, no. 579; cat. 1927, no. 579
Material	Paper > Vegetable material > Organic material > Material > Material and technique Pen > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique Chalk > 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

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Entry catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600

Author: Giada Damen

This drawing represents the figures of Mercury and Pegasus depicted on the right hand side of Andrea Mantegna’s painting Parnassus now in Paris.^[1]Mantegna executed the painting in 1497 for the studiolo (study) of Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), Marchioness of Mantua and a leading patron of the arts in the early sixteenth century.

The drawing was published for the first time as an original work by the artist in 1907 when it was in the collection of Pierre Cloix at Montigny-sur-Loing.^[2]Also in that collection was a drawing of Mars and Venus, another detail from the same painting. Unfortunately the whereabouts of that sheet, executed in the same technique and by the same hand as the Mercury and Pegasus drawing, are now unknown.^[3]

In 1908 James Paton published the present drawing as a preparatory study for Mantegna’s painting, praising it as ‘quite superior to the finished group’.^[4]In the same year the sheet was offered as a gift to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. However, the drawing has since been understood as a later copy, probably of the eighteenth century. It is likely that the unknown draughtsman was copying a print rather than deriving the figures from Mantegna’s painting directly.