Provenance

Jonathan Richardson, Sen. (1667-1745), London (Lugt 2184 and 2984)

Herbert List (1903-1975), Munich (Lugt 4063)

Wolfgang Ratjen (1943-1997), Vaduz, by 1975

Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel, Munich, from whom acquired in 2001 by

Herbert Kasper (1926-2020), New York (his sale: New York, Christie’s, 14 October 2021, lot 15, illustrated)

Exhibitions

Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung; Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett; Hamburg, Kunsthalle; Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum; and Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Stiftung Ratjen, Italienische Zeichnungen des 16.-18. Jahrhunderts, Eine Asstellung zum Andenken an Herbert List, 1977-1978, p. 20, cat. no. 5, illustrated (entry by R. Harprath)

Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Polidoro da Caravaggio tra Napoli e Messina, 1988-1999, pp. 69-70, cat. no. V.5, illustrated (entry by P. Leone de Castris)

New York, The Morgan Library and Museum, Mannerism and Modernism: The Kasper Collection of Drawings and Photographs, 2011, pp. 38-39, cat. no. 3, illustrated (entry by R. Eitel-Porter)

Literature

L. Ravelli, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Bergamo, 1978, cat. no. 186, illustrated

P. Leone de Castris, “Polidoro alla Pietra del Pesce,” in Ricerche di storia dell’arte, 21, 1983, pp. 29-30, 48, n. 46, fig. 12

P. Leone de Castris, I dipinti di Polidoro da Caravaggio per la Chiesa della pescheria a Napoli, exhibition catalogue, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, 1985, pp. 12, 22, illustrated (bearing caption of the Musée du Louvre drawing)

F. Abbate, in Andrea de Salerno nel rinascimento meridionale, exhibition catalogue, Padula, Certosa di San Lorenzo, 1986, p. 162, under cat. no. 34

G. Briganti and L. Arcangeli, La Pittura in Italia, Il Cinquecento, Milan, 1987, p. 440

L. Ravelli, Un fregio di Polidoro a Palazzo Baldassini in Roma, Bergamo, 1988, p. 20

Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel, Italian Drawings, 1500-1800, dealer’s catalogue, Munich, 1999, cat. no. 5, illustrated

P. Leone de Castris, Polidoro da Caravaggio, L’opera completa, Naples, 2001, cat. no. D.257, illustrated

D. Cordellier, Polidoro da Caravaggio, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2007, p. 76

Born in the Lombard town of Caravaggio, south of Bergamo, Polidoro Caldara went to Rome and entered Raphael’s workshop in about 1515.  One of the most gifted if unconventional followers of the master, Polidoro worked with Giulio Romano (1499-1546) and Perino del Vaga (1501-1547) on the decorations of the Vatican Logge of Pope Leo X (r. 1513-1521). Later, he became the leading painter of external fresco façade decoration in the city; most of his work in this genre has not survived and is known only through numerous copies made by other artists.  His style – mannered, dramatic, eccentric, and severe at the same time – derives from antique prototypes, particularly Roman relief sculpture and surviving ancient grotesque decoration.

Driven from the city during the 1527 Sack of Rome, Polidoro fled to Naples where he undertook several church commissions, including the masterpiece of his Neapolitan period, the great altarpiece of SS. Peter and Andrew and the Souls in Purgatory, originally designed to frame an ancient votive painting of the Virgin and Child in the church of S. Maria della Grazie alle Pescherie, and now surviving in fragments at Capodimonte.¹

A fine group of drawings has survived to document the overall design of the altarpiece and its individual panels, including a finished, early proposal for the entire composition at Windsor² which shows a remarkable frame enclosing a single painting housing the panel of the Madonna and Child. In the end, however, it was decided to make the altarpiece as an assemblage of independent panels surrounding the votive panel.  The subsequent drawings for this design all study the individual elements separately: the composition for the Souls in Purgatory, and the two patron saints of fishermen, Saints Peter and Andrew. Gradually dismantled over the centuries, the only surviving panels of the altarpiece are those of Peter and Andrew,³  now conserved at Capodimonte; the votive panel of the Madonna and Child and the panel of the Souls in Purgatory are untraced.

Our drawing is the definitive study of several drawings made for the panel of Saint Andrew.  Saint Andrew’s intended position within the altarpiece evolved over the course of several preparatory drawings. The first isolated study for the figure of Saint Andrew, also from the collection of Jonathan Richardson, Sen., and now at Vassar College,⁴  shows the saint standing in the opposite direction and holding his cross in his right hand rather than in his left, as in our sheet and the final panel painting. A red chalk drawing, formerly in the collection of John Gere, shows him standing in the same direction as the Vassar sheet, but holding the cross in his left hand, as in our sheet.⁵  A third, very finished drawing in the Louvre is another version of our sheet, less sumptuous in technique and slightly weaker in execution.⁶

The present sheet, described by Pierluigi Leone de Castris as the “studio definitivo per il Sant’Andrea,”⁷ shows the fisherman saint holding his cross in his left hand, and balancing a book in his right, and facing left towards the votive panel of the Virgin and Child in the center of the assembled altarpiece. In the Capodimonte panel, the figure is slightly altered in that his head is inclined slightly upwards towards the votive panel of the Madonna, and the book has been removed for his arm to be outstretched in a more dynamic gesture towards the viewer, giving greater movement to the composition.  The drawing is made almost entirely with the brush and brown wash, richly heightened with gouache. This signature technique of Polidoro is characteristic of the artist’s drawings made in Naples, and later in Messina. The fine chiaroscuroeffect in this beautiful sheet achieves a pathos and expressive character distinctive of the artist.⁸