Anonym (spanisch, 17. Jh.)
Totenschädel, 17. Jahrhundert
This drawing was previously attributed to Juan Fernández de Navarrete, El Mudo (1526–1579), to whom numerous anonymous Spanish drawings have been assigned arbitrarily in museums and collections around the world.[1] As a symbol of brevity, the skull is one of the most important props for many subjects in the fine arts. One can assume that every artist's workshop had at least one, and that it was repeatedly drawn and painted by nearly everyone. This toothless skull has been skillfully positioned in space solely by means of delicately graduated washes, and its bone structure is very precisely rendered. Given the relatively small and rounded eye sockets, the nose opening, and
the shape of the jaw, it must have been identifiable in a painting; recognizable traces of a grid on the sheet suggest a transfer. The artist's exclusive use of wash technique likens it to another such work in the Hamburg collection: Clemente Fernández de Torres's Christ Bearing the Cross (inv. no. 38616, cat. 159), as well as Francisco de Herrera the Elder's depictions of saints (inv. nos. 38552-38563, cat. nos. 71-82). Nonetheless, a definitive attribution has yet to be established.
Jens Hoffmann-Samland
1. It does not appear in Fernández Pardo 1995, who pointed out one of the problems of studying Navarrete's drawings: "to further confuse matters, we have inherited a group of drawings scattered among the finest European museums of painting [...], whose labels and catalogs still attribute them to Navarrete." Fernández Pardo 1995, 225.