Two Seated Female Fauns with Children

Author: Sarah Vowles

This lively drawing of two female satyrs with their children was probably a preparatory study for a fresco, designed to sit above either a door or a window. Mythological figures of this type often appear at this period as ornamental elements in decorative cycles commissioned for palaces and villas.

An old inscription, perhaps added by the early owner Zaccaria Sagredo, attributes it to Benedetto Caliari (1538-1598), but this idea cannot be sustained. While Benedetto’s character as a draughtsman is still unclear, the few generally accepted drawings by him have nothing stylistically in common with the Rotterdam sheet. Scholars have attempted to find an alternative attribution for the drawing: Tietze/Tietze-Conrat suggested unconvincingly that it was closer to Benedetto Castiglione (1609-1664) and, in a verbal communication of 1976, Alessandro Ballarini attributed it to the young Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), suggesting it could be a study for his lost frescoes at the Villa Sovania.^[1] However, this seems equally problematic: even in Veronese’s earliest known drawings, such as that in Paris of about 1552,^[2] the figures have a monumentality and confidence which this drawing does not share.

In its themes, style and mise-en-page, the drawing has echoes of the work of Paolo Farinati (1524-1606), Veronese’s contemporary and countryman, who spent his career in their native Verona. The strong contours of the present drawing, and the use of brush-and-wash for pentimenti, such as the head, are reminiscent of his work.^[3] While this drawing does not seem sophisticated enough to be a work by Farinati himself, it is likely that the anonymous artist either studied or worked in Verona in the 16th century.