Townscape with Stronghold

Author: Rosie Razzall

There are very few drawings known to be by the Venetian painter Giorgione; the only generally-accepted sheet is a red chalk landscape drawing also in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.^[1] The present abraded landscape drawing in metalpoint on grey-blue prepared paper was regarded by Tietze/Tietze Conrat in 1944 as ‘a very important drawing’ which they attributed, with reservations, to Giorgione.^[2] However, few other scholars have concurred with this opinion, and it seems more likely that the drawing is by an artist in the circle of Giorgione or Giulio Campagnola (c.1482-after 1515).

Tietze/Tietze Conrat based their attribution on the similarities they observed between the landscape in this drawing and the one in a painting of The Finding of the Infant Paris in Milan, then attributed to Giorgione, but now not generally accepted as part of Giorgione’s oeuvre.^[3] The landscapes do indeed closely relate to each other. There are two crenellated walls or towers high on a hill on the left, a sharply descending abutting wall, and a group of buildings around a clearing or courtyard below. At the centre is a house with a distinctive gable end divided by wooden beams. The steep hill interspersed with clumps of bushes on the right is also found in the painting, although it has been moved further across to accommodate the group of figures on the road. Pignatti suggested that the slightly different position from which the landscapes were taken might imply that the view was drawn from reality.^[4]

Ultimately the attribution of the Rotterdam drawing may only be resolved via a more certain attribution of the painting, which has also been given to Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460/1465-1525/1526),^[5] Lazzaro Bastiani (before 1430-c.1512),^[6] Vincenzo Catena/Vincenzo di Biagio (1480-1531),^[7] Giulio Campagnola,^[8] and most recently, an anonymous artist of the Venetian school.^[9] As for the drawing, Pignatti felt that Giulio Campagnola was also a reasonable possibility, while Wethey referred to the work as a ‘superior sheet, possibly by a forerunner of Giorgione’, but in such a lamentable condition that an assessment was difficult to reach.^[10] The remaining uncertainties make the drawing difficult to date: Wethey suggested c.1490, but an association with Campagnola or Vincenzo Catena would make it more likely to be c.1500-1510. An object in the foreground described by Wethey as a bird drawn in wash appears to be an accidental shiny spot, perhaps of glue or paste from an earlier mounting. The sheet is not laid down and has no watermark.

Although it is executed in metalpoint rather than in brush and wash, the present drawing might be loosely compared with a drawing of an assemblage of buildings on grey prepared paper, recently published by Peter Dreyer as an autograph study by Giorgione.^[11] Even if that attribution does not stand, it shows that several Venetian artists in the circles of Giorgione and Campagnola made studies of clusters of buildings on prepared paper for use as landscape settings in their paintings.