Four Studies of a Female Nude, an Annunciation and Two Studies of a Woman Swimming

Author: Rosie Razzall

This beautifully observed sheet, one of eight drawings attributed to Pisanello or his workshop still in Rotterdam,^[1] has rightly been deemed one of the finest and most interesting nude studies of the early Renaissance.^[2] In the upper left corner of the drawing is a study of an angel and Virgin for the Annunciation. The rest of the sheet is occupied by six studies of the female nude: four standing figures in the lower part of the sheet, and two swimmers in the remaining space above. One stretches out her arm along the edge of an embankment, the rippling water marked with a few lines of the pen. The unusual combination of copied motifs and creative studies on the same sheet means that the drawing has been celebrated for its transitional character, combining medieval model book practice with the observational study of life models that became the foundation of the Renaissance workshop.

There is a strong resemblance between the facial features of the nude woman on the far right holding up the tresses of her hair, and the Virgin in several paintings by Pisanello, most notably his fresco of the Annunciation in the church of San Fermo Maggiore, Verona,^[3] but also in the Madonna of the Quail.^[4] The kneeling angel with bowed head is also close to the San Fermo fresco, which precedes this drawing by several years.^[5] The Annunciation scene thus derives from the typical practice of copying motifs from a model book, so that the workshop style was preserved in multiple versions of the same subject. The fact that the figures are drawn in outline only with no tonal shading has been interpreted differently by several scholars. Some have proposed that the angel and Virgin were drawn at a different date,^[6] while others have suggested that the Annunciation scene is by another hand.^[7] However, comparison with the swimmers nearby, who also receive little tonal shading, does not support the suggestion of two separate hands.^[8] The treatment of the figures merely reflects the relative rigidity of a copied motif that may even have been drawn from memory, and left unfinished.

The fluidly drawn nude figures represent a different kind of drawing practice altogether, and they are probably among the earliest studies from life models in existence. Most scholars believe that the same figure is seen from four different angles, although others have suggested that it is two pairs of views: one with arms raised, and the other with arms lowered.^[9] Each figure is seen in a graceful pose, stepping forward with the weight on one foot. The women’s hair is arranged in decorative styles, often compared to those in paintings by Pisanello’s teacher Stefano da Verona (c.1375-c.1438).^[10] The careful observation of anatomy is seen in the delineation of the musculature of the back, the shoulder blades, and the tendons of the feet. While Bohn is an outlier in suggesting that the figures may be based on male models,^[11] other scholars have generally taken up the proposal first put forward by Rosenberg in 1959 that the women were drawn in a bath house or an open air bathing scene.^[12] Elsewhere in the taccuino di viaggio (see note 1) on a page now in Berlin^[13] is another sequence of studies of a bathing woman, much less expertly drawn, but showing that another member of the workshop also responded to this subject.^[14] On the recto of the Berlin^[15] sheet are two studies of a standing boy taken from a posed model in the workshop, and a St Peter model book type. This comparable combination of motifs is further evidence of the co-existence of multiple approaches to drawing in Pisanello’s workshop.

Despite the close observation of actual models, the nude figures also make reference to antique types, most notably in the figure seen from the front on the far right, who is based on the Venus Anadyomene, the goddess rising from the sea and wringing out her hair.^[16] Burke also points out that the high, round and separated breasts of this figure conform to idealized beauty of the period rather than observed reality.^[17] Drawings based on other Venus variants also appear in the taccuino, such as the Venus Pudica seen in I 522 and I 524,^[18] consistent with Pisanello’s encountering of antique sculpture in Rome in 1431-32. Other readings of the Rotterdam nudes have considered their narrative function, referencing mythological subjects such as Venus or Three Graces,^[19] or the courtly significance of the dance.^[20] Some scholars have compared the sheet to Pisanello’s study of Luxuria in Vienna,^[21] or highlighted its closeness to the work of French and Southern Netherlandish artists that Pisanello may have seen in Mantua.^[22] Chapman and Faietti also note the relationship of the four figures, seen from multiple angles, to Pisanello’s sculptural experiments.^[23] The female nudes on the Rotterdam sheet also demonstrate a creative freedom that transcends both copying and observation. The profiles of the women at furthest left and second from right are repeated in the faces of the swimmers in the upper corner. Meanwhile, the swimmers’ bodies were presumably drawn from the artist’s own invention. This is suggested by the awkwardness of their limbs, which seem to sit on top of the water rather than in it, and the somewhat contrived nature of the riverbank.

While the authorship of other drawings in the taccuino has been much debated, the recto of this sheet was always accepted as one of the few sheets in the book that was certainly by Pisanello’s hand.^[24] After decades of scholarship supporting this attribution, in 2004 Degenhart and Schmitt decided that the sheet is not by Pisanello after all, noting that it ‘lacks the unmistakeable … formal notation of Pisanello’s draughtsmanship’.^[25] In particular, the scholars compare the Rotterdam drawing with a drawing of a man with bound hands seen from behind that they accept as autograph in Edinburgh.^[26] They suggest that this figure displays an expressiveness not seen in the Rotterdam sheet, noting an anxious attitude to the nude figures and no organic flow to the modelling.^[27] They come to the highly conjectural conclusion that the Rotterdam drawing is based on a lost draft by Pisanello, but was made by a pupil.^[28] In this author’s opinion, this proposal does not account for the sheet’s fluidity or imaginative freedom, which stand out among other drawings from the book. As Degenhart and Schmitt concede, the question of whether the drawing is by Pisanello or a member of his workshop may ultimately always remain a matter of subjective opinion.^[29]

As is the case with many of the drawings from the taccuino di viaggio, the sheet has been drawn on both sides, here undoubtedly by another hand.^[30] On the verso is a group of fighting warriors with a fallen Amazon, and two other seated Amazons. These figures were copied from the so-called Sarcophagus of the Amazons, which in the 1430s stood in the courtyard of the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in Rome. Dismantled in the sixteenth century, the respective parts from which these scenes were copied are now in the Vatican^[31] and London.^[32] The figures are drawn in simple outline with some hatched shading and wash. They have been noted as one of the earliest examples of figures being copied as a group, thus capturing their narrative relationship to one another.^[33] Pisanello regularly sent his students out to copy from antique fragments in Rome, and there are several other examples in the taccuino.^[34]