Composition Study for the Martyrdom of a Saint

Author: Albert Elen

This is one of a group of thirteen sheets which came to Rotterdam with the Koenigs Collection in 1935 (S 18-30). The collector had bought them in 1930 from the Florentine art dealer Luigi Grassi (1858-1937), as attributed to El Greco (1541-1614). They were part of a collector’s album once owned by Sir Archibald Alison (1757-1867) in Glasgow, which was broken up by Grassi in the early 1920s (see S 20). At the time attributed to El Greco, most of the drawings are now considered the work of Alessandro Maganza because some can be connected to paintings by him and they all share the same stylistic features.

Our drawing is one of several compositional sketches in this group which all share the same turbulent handling of the pen, with occasional unintentional bleeding of the iron gall ink, which is typical of Maganza’s pen drawings. The pen was used over an underdrawing in black chalk, but not entirely, only the main scene in the foreground. At the lower left a figure is seated on steps and only his head has been touched with the pen.

The vertical format of the composition is indicated by a framing line in chalk and it was therefore evidently preparatory for a painting. Until recently the scene was described as ‘a Holy legend’.^[1] A bearded man, surrounded by a crowd, seems to be carried to a grave. With his hands folded in prayer, the saint is looking up to the sky. Matarrese (2002) identified the scene as St John the Evangelist descending into his self-dug grave, watched by his pupils, as evidenced by a very similar pen-and-wash drawing in Rio de Janeiro, which has an eagle, the apostle’s attribute, in the foreground.^[2]

De Boer (2008) listed our drawing as a deposition of St John the Evangelist, possibly preparatory to the painting with the martyr’s death of the apostle in the Oratorio Segreto di San Girolamo in Vicenza, now lost.^[3] However, the apostle in our drawing is not, as Christian tradition describes, voluntarily descending into the pit but is instead carried there to be lowered into it. Moreover, he is bearded, whereas St John the Evangelist is the only apostle usually represented without a beard. Nor can the drawing be related to the painting in the Oratorio Segreto, because the saint’s martyrdom is not represented here, as John was tortured by being boiled in a large tub of hot oil (which he miraculously survived). Another possibility might be St Lawrence being carried to the gridiron (symbol of his martyrdom), which seems to be merely indicated by a square on the ground. A man with a torch stands on the far right, ready to light the fire under the gridiron. But this identification is not convincing either.

The bearded bald head in our drawing is very similar to that of St Philip in a drawing depicting his martyrdom, now in New York.^[4] The stooping figure seen at the far right is much like the ones in a composition drawing of the martyrdom of St Lawrence from the former C.R. Rudolf Collection^[5] and in another drawing by Maganza now also in New York.^[6]