Jason, Medea with One of Her Dead Children Fleeing on a Dragon-Chariot, Creusa and Three Mourning Putti

Author: Rosie Razzall

This double-sided sheet is from the so-called taccuino di viaggio (traveller’s notebook), a drawing book inherited by Pisanello from Gentile da Fabriano (c.1375-1427).^[1] Both sides of the sheet depict scenes taken from antique sarcophagi in Rome. The mythological figures on the recto are copied from a sarcophagus of which several versions exist, but in this case are taken from the one that stood in the churchyard of the basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano in Rome until 1550 and is now in Ancona.^[2] The scenes are taken from the fateful wedding of Jason and Creusa that was stormed by Jason’s vengeful first wife, Medea. She arrived on her dragon-chariot to murder two of her and Jason’s children, and is seen at the top right of the sheet carrying one of her boys over her shoulder. At the top left is Jason, standing with his hand on one hip and his garment over his arm. In the lower part of the sheet is the mournful Creusa, seated on a bench and flanked by three erote (Roman cupids), one of whom is partly cut off where the sheet has been trimmed. These erote are not copied from the sarcophagus but are the artist’s own addition, and Degenhart/Schmitt noted that two of them stand in a pose associated with death and mourning, leaning against a torch with their head on one arm.^[3] As Degenhart/Schmitt also observed, the figures on both sides have several alterations and amendments, and as such are not close or mechanical copies, but freer interpretations in which the artist imbued the subjects with more emotional expression.^[4]

On the verso are three Nereids (sea nymphs), one astride a lion, another astride a bull and a third reclining below with two putti and a basket of fruit. The two upper figures are copied from a frieze that is now bricked into the east façade of the Villa Medici in Rome.^[5] A drawing in the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657), now in Windsor,^[6] shows the relief before trees were added to the background. The source for the reclining figure has not been identified, but it is similar to various figures from Roman reliefs including on the lid of a sarcophagus in the Vatican.^[7] The artist also made changes to the figures, notably the snake-like tail of the lion, the position of the reclining Nereid’s arm, and the removal of a veil.^[8]

The attribution of the sheet is now generally accepted as by a member of Pisanello’s workshop, though for a time it was believed to be by Gentile da Fabriano, or by Pisanello himself.^[9] Luke Syson draws a connection between the face of the Nereid riding a lion and that of the Virgin in Pisanello’s painting of the Virgin and Child with St Anthony Abbot and St George in London,^[10] and less convincingly between the son of Medea on the recto and the face of the Christ Child in the same painting. These similarities may merely reflect the consistency of facial types among the examples drawn by various members of the Pisanello workshop.