Study Sheet with Female Head in Profile and Angels Blowing Horns

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Specifications

Title	Study Sheet with Female Head in Profile and Angels Blowing Horns
Material and technique	Pen and brown ink, brown wash
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 241 mm Width 190 mm
Artists	: Maso Finiguerra : Anoniem
Accession number	I 500 (PK)
Credits	Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), 1940
Department	Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date	1940
Creation date	in circa 1450-1500
Watermark	upper half of a griffin (fragment, 45 x 59 mm, centre right margin, on P4 of 7P, vV, see fig. Degenhart/Schmitt 1968, vol. I-2, p. 658, WZ 76)
Inscriptions	'2.[...]' (verso, top right, old folio number, pen and brown ink), '315' (idem, top left, pencil), '[...]' (idem, bottom right, black chalk)
Collector	Collector / Franz Koenigs
Mark	A. Grahl (L.1199). F.W. Koenigs (L.1023a) deest
Provenance	August Grahl (1791-1868, L.1199), Dresden; his sale, London (Sotheby) 27-28.04.1885, lot 318, ill. (Paolo Uccello, BP 1/10/0); Benno Geiger, Vienna/Venice; his sale, London (Sotheby) 07.12.1920, lot 164 (North Italian, 15th century); - ; Franz W. Koenigs (1881-1941, L.1023a), Haarlem, acquired in 1920-1930 (Italian, 15th century); D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955), Rotterdam, acquired with the Koenigs Collection in 1940 and donated to Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Research	Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600
Literature	Grahl 1885, no. 318, ill.; Salmi 1938, p. 153; Geiger 1948, no. 2 (Domenico Veneziano); Degenhart/Schmitt 1968, vol. I-2, pp. 613, 618, fig. 955 (putti from Finiguerra group)
Material	Pen > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique Brown ink > Ink > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique
Object	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Technique	Brown wash > Washing > Wash > Drawing technique > Technique > Material and technique
Geographical origin	Italy > Southern Europe > Europe
Place of manufacture	Verona > Veneto region > Italy > Southern Europe > Europe

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Entry catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600

Author: Giada Damen

The drawing was part of a large group of sheets and books of drawings that were left in the bottega (workshop) of Maso Finiguerra after he had died. While much of this material ended up in the Medici collection in Florence – almost one hundred sheets are today in the Uffizi – many books of drawings were dispersed and disbound. They are now scattered among private and public collections around the world.^[1]

On this sheet the draughtsman combined studies of unrelated images: on the left there is a profile of a woman wearing a veil, and on the right two winged putti playing wind instruments. These motifs were probably derived from antique sources.

As noted by Albert Elen, some aspects of the drawing – a cut off watermark at the center of the right margin of the sheet and the presence of an old folio number at the top right corner on the verso – seem to indicate that the sheet once belonged to a quarto sketchbook.^[2]Another drawing of similar size, also combining figures from contemporary life and motifs from the antique, is now in Paris.^[3]Lorenza Melli has suggested that the Rotterdam and Paris sheets might have been originally part of the same taccuino (drawing book).^[4]

At the end of the nineteenth century the present drawing was ascribed to Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), and later on to Domenico Veneziano (1410-1461),^[5]but in 1968 Degenhart and Schmitt returned it to the circle of the Florentine painter Maso Finiguerra together with a large group of other sheets described as the ‘Finiguerra group’.^[6]The linear style of these drawings, produced as teaching exercises and as a repertoire of images to be used in the bottega, makes it difficult to solve questions of attribution within the workshop. Recently Melli has argued, however, that although in several drawings by Finiguerra and his workshop the quality of draughtsmanship is not always uniform, many of these works should nevertheless be ascribed to the master himself as his style deeply permeated the output and artistic evolution of all his associates.^[7]According to the scholar the present sheet is to be placed chronologically towards the end of Finiguerra’s career, when his style was influenced by the art of Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1433-1498).