Composition Study for 'The Holy Trinity in Paradise with Saints and Angels'

Author: Albert Elen

The present drawing is one of eight compositional studies by Alessandro Maganza, all part of a group of thirteen sheets which came to Rotterdam with the Koenigs Collection in 1935 (S 18-30). At the time attributed to El Greco (1541-1614), most of them are now considered the work of Maganza because some can be connected to paintings by him (see the entry for S 20) and they all share the same stylistic features. The attribution to Maganza was first suggested by Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944) for just two of them (S 22, S 24) - although they remained sceptical as they were unable to relate any of them to existing paintings.^[1] Since Byam Shaw’s (1976, 1983) implicit acceptance of the attribution, when superficially referring to the Rotterdam group of drawings, they have been studied in relation to his painted oeuvre, mainly consisting of lesser known, or even lost, large religious paintings for churches in his hometown of Vicenza and surrounding villages, to some of which individual drawings have been successfully linked, including the present drawing here.^[2]

It was listed in the Koenigs Collection as ‘The Holy Trinity in Glory’.^[3] It was only quite recently that the related painting of our drawing, which is actually relatively small, surfaced on the art market (fig.).^[4] It fits the description of the ‘quadro sopra il banco, nella facciata, contiene il Paradiso, con il Padre, il Figlio, e lo Spirito Santo, e molti Santi, é opera di Alessandro Maganza’ (painting above the bench, in the facade, contains the Paradise, with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and many Saints, the work of Alessandro Maganza) in the sacristy of the missionaries of the Duomo (Santa Maria Annunziata), mentioned by Boschini in his guide to the marvels of Vicenza (1676) and already related to our sheet by De Boer (2008).^[5]

The Rotterdam drawing is the compositional design for the painting. The general layout and the main figures - the hovering Christ and God the Father seated on clouds - were adapted with minor changes, but the rest was worked out quite differently, adding a man bearing a cross at lower left and an angel with a banner above.^[6] Like another composition design in this group (S 20), our sheet, twice folded for dispatch, may have served as a vidimus, which was sent to the client for approval.^[7] It is typical of Maganza, characterized by a rendering of the figures in swirling lines, focusing on their movements and interaction, and much less on details. This virtuosity of style and handling marks the artistic quality of Maganza's draughtsmanship, as opposed to his generally rather dull paintings, the one related to our drawing being a rare exception.