Study of an Angel

Giuseppe Cesari il Cavaliere d'Arpino (in circa 1585-1590)

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Specifications

Title	Study of an Angel
Material and technique	Black and red chalk
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 206 mm Width 145 mm
Artists	Draughtsman: Giuseppe Cesari il Cavaliere d'Arpino
Accession number	I 376 (PK)
Credits	Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), 1940
Department	Drawings & Prints
Acquisition date	1940
Creation date	in circa 1585-1590
Watermark	anchor in a circle, with a six-pointed star on top (62 x 41 mm, upside-down, in the centre, on P3 of 6P, vH, fine paper, folio), common type found in archival documents in South Germany, Austria, Italy, esp. in the early 16th c., comparable with Briquet 480 (a.o. Rome 1513, Vicenza 1515), Briquet 488 (Ferrara 1583), Piccard Online AT3800-PO-119079 (Tirol 1511) [see 2 images]
Inscriptions	‘[…] peme[…] / ‘L. pem[…]’ (r.m., pencil, cut off at edge of sheet), 'Parmigian / Florentinisch' (verso, pencil)
Collector	Collector / Franz Koenigs
Provenance	Art dealer Julius W. Böhler (1883-1966), Lucerne; Franz W. Koenigs (1881-1941, L.1023a), Haarlem, acquired in 1929 (Florentine, early 16th century); D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955), Rotterdam, acquired with the Koenigs Collection in 1940 and donated to Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Exhibitions	Amsterdam 1955, no. 165; Rotterdam 2009-2010 (coll 2 kw 5)
Internal exhibitions	De Collectie Twee - wissel V, Prenten & Tekeningen (2009)
Research	Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600
Literature	Amsterdam 1955, no. 165, pl. 47; Bolzoni 2013, p. 189, under no. 31; Röttgen 2013, no. 35
Material	Red chalk > Chalk > Artist's material > Material > Material and technique Paper > Vegetable material > Organic material > Material > Material and technique Black chalk > Chalk > 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: Surya Stemerding

John Gere was the first to attribute this drawing to Cesari in 1962. Bolzoni (2013) dates it between 1585 and 1590 because of the angel’s facial type and other stylistic features.^[1] Two related drawings in London and Berlin, on the other hand, are regarded as copies.^[2]

The figure was drawn in a virtuosic manner with swift, flowing lines in Cesari’s distinctive early style. It is a rapid sketch laid down in black chalk and then worked up with red chalk before being further modelled with black chalk hatching.

The figure looks like a decorative element in a larger composition. Despite its outstretched wings the angel is not hovering in the air but walking on the ground, as can be seen from the short horizontal strokes of chalk beneath both feet. He looks down, but at what is not clear. He rests his left arm and hand on what appears to be the top of an escutcheon, while holding up a cloth or banderole with his right hand. In the London and Berlin sheets the escutcheon and the angel itself are shown in detail, indicating that those drawings were executed after Cesari’s painted decorations and not after the Rotterdam sheet. Röttgen (2013) suggested that the latter is a preliminary study for a detail in one of the lost frescoes in the Palazzo Santori, although there are no firm grounds for that proposal.^[3]

Footnotes

^[1]According to Philip Pouncey in a note on his visit to the museum on 8 April 1962.

^[2]British Museum, inv. T,13.85; Gere/Pouncey 1983, no. 27 (‘“Arpino” in the Fawkener MS Inventory, but no more than a weak copy after a lost drawing’); Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. KdZ 20856; Bolzoni 2013, pp. 189, 422, no. B74 (circle of Cesari). See also Röttgen 2013, pp. 98-99.

^[3]All that survives of this project is a preliminary study for an allegorical figure with the coat of arms of the Santori family; Röttgen 2013, no. 28.

Show research Italian Drawings 1400-1600

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