Zeichner
Francisco de Zurbarán, ehemals zugeschrieben
Nach rechts gewendeter Heiliger, die Hände gefaltet, Frühes 17. Jahrhundert
This drawing and nine others included in the catalogue raisonné of this publication, identified as inv. nos. 38638, 38645, 38644, 38639, 38642, 38641, 38646, 38643, and 38647 (cat. nos. 180–88), are all by the same hand. Traditionally, they have been associated with Francisco de Zurbarán. In Echeverría's inventory they are attributed directly to the artist (“64. De Zurbaràn”, Nr. 65–68: “Idem.”), whereas subsequent commentators have generally been more cautious, beginning with August Mayer, who acknowledged the drawings' relationship with Zurbarán and his workshop, but refrained from attributing them definitively to the artist's hand. He observed that they were all made essentially as drapery studies. (Oddly enough, the Angulo Iñiguez-Pérez Sánchez Corpus[1] cites Mayer (whose 1918 article is in Spanish) as stating that they appear “to have been designed as a group of sketches for tapestries” but this is due to an erroneous translation into English of paños, which can mean either “draperies” or “tapestries”). Hugo Kehrer (1926) considered them all to be autographed by Zurbarán, and the Hamburg spanische Zeichnungen[2] exhibition catalogue of 1966 cites the oral opinion of French drawings specialist Arlette Sérullaz, who thought they might be by Luis Tristán (ca. 1585–1624). Sérullaz compared them with a sheet in the Musée du Louvre that is most likely Figure of a Saint (inv. RF29775r). However, the resemblance is limited, and that drawing is currently attributed at the Louvre to “Anonymous Sevillian, Seventeenth century.”[3] They have no special link with Tristán's known drawings. Alfonso Pérez Sánchez in the 1980 Spanish drawings exhibition in Madrid, and in the Corpus volume, considered that the Hamburg drawings are generally connected with Zurbarán, but that the attribution could be neither positively affirmed nor confidently rejected. He noted a characteristic common to nearly all the sheets-the heads are disproportionately small in relation to the bodies, and the hands are too big. Although boldly executed, they cannot be considered of a very high aesthetic quality. For this volume, the authors have adopted a position both cautious and traditional, describing them as from the “Circle of Zurbarán." They are arranged within this publication's catalogue raisonné in two groups on the basis of the color of the paper: four on blue prepared sheets and six on white paper.
Although Zurbarán must have made many drawings, no certain sheet by him is known. No drawing is signed by him and none is clearly preparatory for any of his paintings. The archival documents associated with Zurbarán do not mention contract drawings or works made for the patron's approval, nor are there any drawings listed in his post-mortem inventory, although he did have a collection of prints. Head of a Monk (1895, 0915.873)[4] in the British Museum is generally held to be a strong candidate for Zurbarán's authorship, together with a small group of drawings of female saints (Corpus III, nos. 230, 231, 244, and 247 [this a copy of a lost drawing] and a Saint Agatha, also in the British Museum).[5] In his brief biography of Zurbarán (1724), Antonio Palomino drew attention to the artist's intense interest in making drapery studies: “he was so diligent that he made all his draperies by placing them on lay figures and [he made] the flesh elements from nature."[6]
The same model posed for this drawing and inv. nos. 38638 and 38645 (cat. nos. 180 and 181), and as in the first of those two drawings, this figure wears a tunic or cassock with the sleeves folded over at the wrists and a large cloak draped over his left shoulder. He joins his hands as if in prayer, taking up the pose of an apostle or saint. The sharp incline of the head and the threequarter-length format recalls Zurbarán's San Diego de Alcalá in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid.[7] This work is certainly not a preparatory study for that painting, but it is conceivable that the artist who made the drawing had the model adopt a pose that imitates some painted prototype.
In his treatise, Art of Painting (1649), Francisco Pacheco refers to the Sevillian practice of drawing from clothes draped on manikins or from clay or wax figures wrapped with wet paper, although it was acknowledged that this produced folds of a stiff appearance.[8] The four drawings on the same blue paper (besides the present work: inv. nos. 38638, 38645, and 38644, cat. nos. 180–82) were probably made in quick succession as exercises in reproducing draperies on live models.
Gabriele Finaldi
1 Angulo Íñiguez and Pérez Sánchez 1985, 59, no. 234.
2 Stubbe (dir.) 1966. 28.
3 Lizzie Boubli, Inventaire général des dessins. Ècole espagnole, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2002), 146-47, no. 162.
4 See McDonald 2012, 133.
5 Ibid., 133.
6 Translated from Ayala Mallory 1986, 198 (Sp. Edn “fue este artifice tan estudioso, que todos los panos los hacía por maniqui, y las carnes por el natural"].
7 This was pointed out to me by Dr. Hoffmann-Samland.
8 See Cherry in Davies, Harris et al. 1996, 72–73.