Five Standing Nude Warriors and a Beheaded Man

Circle of: Francesco Squarcione (in circa 1460-1470)

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Specifications

Title	Five Standing Nude Warriors and a Beheaded Man
Material and technique	Pen and brown ink, on grey prepared paper
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 189 mm Width 190 mm
Artists	Circle of: Francesco Squarcione
Accession number	I 181 recto (PK)
Credits	Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), 1940
Department	Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date	1940
Creation date	in circa 1460-1470
Watermark	none (vV, ?P)
Inscriptions	'Verrocchio' (verso, lower left, pencil)
Collector	Collector / Franz Koenigs
Mark	Unknown mark (recto, lower right, fragment), G. de Valori (L.2500), E. Wauters (L.911), F.W. Koenigs (L.1023a)
Provenance	Giustiniani (?) (lower right, coat of arms stamp in black, not in Lugt); Marquis Charles de Valori (1820-1883, L.2500), Paris; his sale, Paris (Delteil) 13-14.02.1908, probably lot 364 or in lot 365 (attributed to Antonio del Pollaiuolo); Emile Wauters (1846-1933, L.911), Paris; his sale, Amsterdam (Muller) 15-16.06.1926, lot 139 (Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Fl 500 to R.W.P. de Vries); Franz W. Koenigs (1881-1941, L.1023a), Haarlem, acquired in 1926 (Antonio del Pollaiuolo); D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955), Rotterdam, acquired with the Koenigs Collection in 1940 and donated to Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Exhibitions	Amsterdam 1934, no. 616; Rotterdam 2010-2011 (coll 2 kw 9)
Internal exhibitions	De Collectie Twee - wissel IX, Prenten & Tekeningen (2011)
Research	Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600
Literature	Amsterdam 1934, no. 616 (Pollaiuolo); Berenson 1938, no. 1943A (school of Pollaiuolo); Ortolani 1948, pp. 174, 201 (inspired by Pollaiuolo); Popham 1958, p. 141 under nos. 198-208; Berenson 1961, no. 1949C (school of Pollaiuolo); Winner 1973, p. 27; Schmitt 1974, p. 205, 208, fig. 4 (Squarcione); Van den Akker 1991, pp. 35-36, 45, fig. 54; Cordellier 1995, p. 179
Material	Paper > Vegetable material > Organic material > Material > Material and technique Brown ink > Ink > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique Pen > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique
Object	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Geographical origin	Italy > Southern Europe > Europe

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Entry catalogue Italian Drawings 1400-1600

Author: Klazina Botke

This sheet can be counted among a group of more than twelve works of similar dimensions, executed in pen and ink on prepared paper (blue, green, pink and brown) that are attributed to the circle of Francesco Squarcione (1397-1468). The sheets come largely from the collection of the eighteenth-century amateur artist John Skippe. He may have acquired them during his stay in Venice and Padua, where he studied the frescoes by Giotto (1266/1267-1337) and Andrea Mantegna (1430/1431-1506) in 1773. The surviving sheets are now to be found in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Munich, Washington, New York, and two private collections.^[1] It is not certain whether the Rotterdam sheet also comes from Skippe’s collection, but the drawing style and images fit within those in the other works in the group. The collector’s mark lower right (a crowned eagle with outstretched wings above a castle with an open door) appears on seven other sheets.^[2] According to Schmitt, the whole group can be placed in the circle of Francesco Squarcione, whereas Popham regards them as coming from Squarcione’s workshop and by an artist in the circle of Marco Zoppo (1433-1498).^[3] Our drawing fits best stylistically with the sheets in Washington (studio of Squarcione) and Amsterdam (attributed to Marco Zoppo). The physiognomy of the figures, in particular, corresponds, although the Amsterdam sheet is clearly more finished and of better quality.^[4]

The drawing shows five naked men standing around a clothed but beheaded man. The figure on the left holds a long stick, which he has placed between the dead man’s legs. On the verso there are studies of six horses in different positions: walking, jumping and grazing. The top of the sheet has been cut off so that only the hooves of two of the horses can be seen. Some of the drawings in the Skippe group have a thematic link to the fresco cycle by Andrea Mantegna that he painted in the Ovetari chapel in Padua between 1448 and 1457. Among the images on the right-hand wall is The Removal of the Beheaded Body of St Christopher, the fresco on which, according to Schmitt, the scene on our sheet could be based.^[5] However it does not explain why the beheaded figure is the only clothed man in the group. Van den Akker therefore sees the sheet as an exercise in rendering different positions without an iconographic connection.^[6]

Footnotes

^[1] Rijksmuseum, inv. RP-T-1959-75; Kupferstichkabinett, inv. KdZ 24774; Courtauld Gallery, inv. D.1958.WF.4670; Staatliche Graphische Sammlung inv. 1973:10 Z; National Gallery of Art, Woodner Collection inv. 2011.42.4; Morgan Library & Museum, inv. 1958.21; Padua 2006, no. 57. See also London (Christie’s) 8 December 2020, ‘The Robert Landolt Collection’. A drawing sold at Sotheby’s London in 1975 (11, cat. no. 14.) has the same stamp and inscription and may also come from this group. The drawing in Munich is attributed to Squarcione himself. Skippe collected drawings, preferably from the Italian school, between 1773 and 1781, see also Lugt Online, L.1529a. According to Albert Elen, a supposed Skippe Album to which reference is sometimes made is a hypothetical lost work that cannot be accepted as such; Elen 1995, pp. 5 and 12, n. 22.

^[2] See Schmitt 1974, p. 212, n. 3. The mark was identified by Mathias Winner as belonging to the Genoese Giustiniani family.

^[3] The exaggerated physiognomy of the figures and hands were said to correspond with those in the print De Moriskendans, attributed to Squarcione by Zani in 1802, see Schmitt 1974, pp. 205-08, Zani 1802, and Passavant 1864. The print is now, however, attributed to the Monogrammist SE and the design possibly to Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510), as a result of which Schmitt’s argument largely lapses, see Kwakkelstein 1998. See also Popham 1958. Previously Bernard Berenson placed the drawing in the style of Antonio del Pollaiuolo and compared the work to a drawing in the Wallace Collection in London (inv. P762), see also Ortolani 1948, p. 201.

^[4] The similarity in style between these two drawings had already been observed by Ruhmer (note on old mount).

^[5] Schmitt 1974, p. 205. In 1944 the chapel was severely damaged in an allied bombing raid. These two scenes were restored in 2006.

^[6] Van den Akker 1991, p. 36.

Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600

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