The Baptism of Christ

Author: Rosie Razzall

In 1928, Franz Koenigs acquired a group of seven drawings believed to be by Signorelli or his school, followed by a further two drawings in 1929.^[1] Of this total of nine drawings, two are now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, where they are claimed by the State of the Netherlands (I 270 and I 275).^[2]

All nine drawings bear the monogram LS written in pen and ink in one of the lower corners, except for I 287, where the corner has been trimmed diagonally and the letters cut off. In her 1995 PhD thesis and catalogue of Signorelli drawings and copies, Van Cleave listed 21 sheets in an ‘inferior group of copies after Signorelli’, all inscribed in pen and ink with these intertwined initials.^[3] Some of Signorelli’s autograph drawings also bear the initials (for example, in London^[4] and Paris^[5]), but their meaning remains unclear. The letters may have been added by a variety of hands at different dates, or were possibly added to a group of autograph and studio drawings by an early collector.^[6]

Van Cleave inadvertently included only one of the Rotterdam drawings in her cataloguing of this group (I 269), noting the location of others in Berlin^[7] and several private collections.^[8]

Clearly all nine Rotterdam drawings belong to the same group, which she describes as after ‘late works by Signorelli and his school… They were obviously familiar with a broad range of Signorelli’s works and may have been resident in Cortona’.^[9] Although she suggests that ‘the copyists may have been working during the mid-sixteenth century, shortly after Signorelli’s death’,^[10] it remains equally possible that they were made by artists in his workshop while he was still alive, and under his direction.

The nine Rotterdam examples are in a range of hands, some juvenile, and are probably all copied after the painted or drawn models circulating in Signorelli’s circle or workshop. Some are drawn in chalks, while others are in pen and ink and wash, a medium that was rarely used by Signorelli himself. Some sheets suggest the presence of two different artists working on the recto and verso of the sheet. Others, such as this example, have been worked on by more than one hand, with a chalk drawing reinforced in pen and ink by another artist.

The drawing shows the Baptism of Christ, with the figures drawn in black and white chalks, with red chalk reserved for John the Baptist’s face, arms, hands and legs. Closely related to Perugino’s fresco of the Baptism in the Sistine Chapel, there are at least five versions of the subject painted by Signorelli or his workshop, but the figures in this drawing do not correspond exactly to any of them. A version in Castello^[11] shows Christ with clasped hands as in our drawing, but John the Baptist is wearing less bulky furs; another version in Arcevia^[12] shows John the Baptist in the much fuller robes of our drawing, holding a cross without a flag, but has Christ with one arm at his waist and the other at his breast.^[13] The composition was probably much repeated by the artists working in Signorelli’s workshop, with minor variations, something that is confirmed by the additions in pen and ink that have probably been drawn by another hand. The artist has reinforced both faces and the torso of Christ with details and shading, and added a knotted cloth to Christ’s otherwise naked lower body. Without having seen the drawing, Van Cleave wondered whether the parts in chalk could be autograph,^[14] and comparison with drawings such as the study for Dante and Virgil in London^[15] shows some similarity in the angular limbs and faces, but the black chalk in the London drawing is much more subtly and fluidly worked. In this author’s opinion the Rotterdam drawing is more likely to be a workshop reworking of a common composition.