The Robert Lehman Collection V

ITALIAN DRAWINGS NOTES: more widely accepted. The prudence that kept the draw 1. One print of the photograph in the Harvard Center for Re ing among the anonymous works in the sale was justified, naissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, Florence, is filed urrder for very few drawings with credible attributions can be Bramantino; another is marked "Mantegna follower." 2. Art Museum, Princeton University, 63.31, Studies of Christ related to this one, and no comparison stands up to care Flagellated, Christ Crucified, the Good Thief, Christ of the ful scrutiny. Lamentation and Heads of Christ and Saint John the Evan The same prudence is found in Beguin's excellent entry gelist; Gibbons 1966, no. 699, ill. for the catalogue of the Paris exhibition of 1957, where the drawing was ascribed to a Venetian master of about PROVENANCE: E. Calando, Paris (Lugt 837); Calando sale 1899, 1500. Beguin argued that the free line, the picturesque lot 124; John Postle Heseltine, London (Lugt 1507); Henry Oppenheimer, London; Oppenheimer sale 1936, lot n9. Ac liveliness of the shading, and a strong Flemish influence quired by Robert Lehman in 1936. all bring to mind an artist of Giorgione's generation who was close to Giovanni Bellini and using motifs recalling EXHIBITED: Northampton (Mass.) 1942-44; New York 1979, Marco Basaiti. She also brought up the question of the nos. 2 7 A, B, ill. identity of the figure sitting writing at the left, whom she thought was probably Saint Jerome but could also be Saint John on Patmos. Although at first glance the figure The Veneto does appear to be Saint Jerome, his usual attributes, the lion and the cardinal's hat, are missing, as Beguin noted. Early sixteenth century But to be Saint John on Patmos he would need the em blematic eagle and a marine landscape. (The left edge of 19. Landscape with Figure the sheet appears to have been trimmed at an early date, and it is possible that the figure's attributes were cut away.) 1975.1.275 Pen and brown ink. 178 x 2n mm. Left edge and lower right The issues Beguin raised were all to be discussed and corner made up; various small holes restored. expanded, though never definitively resolved, in the sub sequent literature. In the catalogues of the Cincinnati As one of the earliest examples of pure landscape in Ital and New Haven exhibitions the drawing was listed under ian art, this sheet is among the best-known drawings in Giovanni Bellini. In 1960, in his discussion of the Saint the Robert Lehman Collection. Like many other old draw Francis in a Landscape in the Musee Bonnat, Bayonne, 2 ings, however, it is difficult to attribute, and the many Bean considered the Lehman sheet to be from the Vene scholars who have discussed it have suggested authors tian school of about 1500. In 1962 both Heinemann and ranging from the Florentine Piero di Cosimo to Venetian Puppi, with good reason, categorically ruled out Bellini. artists like Giovanni Bellini, Bartolomeo Montagna, and Heinemann, who called the drawing Saint John on Alvise Vivarini. Patmos, noted that "Ia composizione ricorda Bartolomeo Berenson ascribed the sheet to Piero di Cosimo in I 9 3 8 Montagna," and Puppi noted its relation to Montagna's and again in 1961, comparing it to two landscape draw painting Saint Jerome in the Brera, Milan. I can see no ings in the Uffizi, Florence, that are more certainly at similarity in either style or technique between this sheet tributed to Piero. 1 Douglas included our drawing in the and the drawings Puppi has convincingly assigned to Mon monograph he published on Piero in 1946, but aside from tagna. When he reviewed Puppi's book in 1967 Gilbert that and the brief mentions in the Northampton and Bos put forward the interesting notion that the Lehman draw ton exhibitions in the 1940s, the attribution had little ing "is somewhat near Previtali," but here we are well impact. In fact, our drawing has only its subject matter and truly in the field of hypothesis because so little is in common with the two Uffizi drawings; in technique known of Previtali's drawings. 3 Gilbert cited the Saint and style both differ profoundly from the Lehman sheet, Jerome in a Landscape in the Schwarz collection, New and they are less "picturesque." York, as the closest parallel to the Lehman sheet, but The attribution to the Venetian school of the early six again the comparison does not hold up; the linework teenth century, proposed when the drawing first appeared here is more intense and the overall feeling is easier and on the market and became known to scholars at the Grassi freer, without the Campagnola-like touch that pervades sale in 1924, is much more convincing and has been far the Schwarz drawing. 4 58 .

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