Recumbent Lion

Author: Albert Elen

Tietze/Tietze-Conrat (1944) rated this drawing ‘excellent’. The work has been attributed to Titian (c.1488/1490-1576), but an attribution to Jacopo Bassano prevails in the more recent literature. There is likewise uncertainty about the function of the drawing: is it a preliminary study or a ricordo (a copy of a complete or incomplete work)?

The drawing is associated with a votive painting by Titian, titled Doge Antonio Grimani Kneeling before Faith, better known as La Fede, in the Sala delle Quattro Porte in the Doge’s Palace in Venice.^[1] The commission for this huge painting was awarded in 1555, but the work had not been completed when the artist died of the plague at a very advanced age in 1576. It was finished by his workshop.^[2] The drawing corresponds with the Venetian lion at the feet of the patron saint, Mark, lower left in the painted composition. In the drawing, however, only the recumbent lion is shown, and the bottom of the saint’s cloak where he stands in front of the lion is indicated with just a couple of swift lines in black chalk. This gap in the middle of the drawing looks rather peculiar at first glance. This could indicate that what we have here is a preliminary study for the lion alone, which could in theory have been made around 1555, were it not that such detail studies were usually made at an advanced stage of the painting process. The black chalk in the drawing is combined with coloured chalk, which Titian did not use but is characteristic of the drawn oeuvre of Jacopo Bassano, whose name, not coincidentally, was noted lower centre by an early collector: ‘Bassan’.^[3]

Rearick (1991, 2001) regards the drawing as a copy by Bassano of the unfinished detail in the painting, made in 1575 during his visit to Titian in his house and workshop in Calle Larga dei Boteri in the Cannaregio district.^[4] This view is not shared by Whistler (2016), although she does leave open the possibility that a talented assistant of Titian’s made the drawing in the technique associated with Bassano. In our opinion, this is a ricordo of the unfinished painting made by Bassano himself or someone in his immediate circle.^[5] The drawing would then have been made between 1568, the year Bassano moved to Venice and his drawing style became known there, and the years after 1576, when the painting was finished by Titian’s workshop.

What has remained unremarked up until now is the similarity between this drawing and a detail lower left in a painted composition study by Tintoretto (1518-1594), now in New York.^[6] It is a study for The Doge Alvise Mocenigo Before the Redeemer, Accompanied by St Mark and Other Saints, a large canvas that Tintoretto painted with his workshop for the Sala del Collegio in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. The doge gave the commission in 1571-74, but the execution dates from around 1582. Although the silhouette of the recumbent lion in the composition study is hard to make out because of its sketchy execution on a dark background, the likeness of the averted head and the open jaws is striking. In this study and in the finished painting, St Mark the Evangelist is placed behind his attribute, so the lion is fully visible and the resemblance to our drawing relates only to the animal’s shoulders, paws and head. The oil study is dated to 1576-77, in other words in the same period as our drawing. Who the inventor of this pictorial element is, Tintoretto or Titian, thus remains unclear.