Three Standing Figures on Postaments with Lances

Author: Klazina Botke

This sheet is adorned with two very different drawings. On the recto there are three standing figures with lances in pen and ink, the central one on a tall column, the two others on plinths. The architecture was precisely drawn with the aid of a ruler, and even the black chalk guidelines are still visible. It is not clear who the figures are meant to be. They are not immediately recognizable as specific saints or mythological figures. The scene also appears to have been trimmed at a slanting angle at the lower edge in order to make the column appear upright. On the verso there is a male torso in red chalk. The lack of a head and arms suggests that it is a copy after a fragment of a classical sculpture. Artists often had small models based on antique examples, so it is very possible that this study was made in a workshop, as is the case with a similar drawing in Washington.^[1]

It is not easy to say whether the red chalk study is by the same artist as the pen drawing. Anthony Blunt suggested that the pen and ink study could be by the painter Filippo Lippi (1457-1504), but it is more likely that it was made by a sculptor or goldsmith.^[2] The figures may be small decorative bronzes like those on a sheet in Washington that was once attributed to Lippi but is now regarded as a work by an artist in the circle of Andrea Riccio (1470-1532), and in a design by Bartolommeo Spani (1468-1539), that is now in New York.^[3] Although the curly locks of hair and the feathers in the hat of the figure on the column would not be feasible to execute in sculptural form, other elements, such as the anonymity of the figures, the overlapping hatchings and the use of a ruler, all point in the direction of a goldsmith or sculptor.