Lot Essay
This is presumably one of the drawings listed after Fra Bartolommeo's death by Lorenzo di Credi as '106 fogli di paesi non coloriti, cioè tochi di penna'. Some sixty of these landscape drawings are known, the majority from the Gabburri owned album sold at Sotheby's in 1957. The ex-Gabburri drawings, like the present sheet, were traditionally attributed to Andrea del Sarto.
Unlike the major part of Fra Bartolommeo's drawings, his landscape studies were not made as preparatory designs for painted works. Only three of them have been related to pictures: the farmhouse studies in the sheet at Cleveland for God the Father, Saint Mary Magdalen and Saint Catherine of 1509 at Lucca, the left part of a river landscape in the Courtauld for the Carondelet Madonna of 1511-2 at Besançon and the approach to a village on a hill in the Metropolitan Museum for the lost Rape of Dina, known through the copy by Bugiardini in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The studies of landscape appear to have been drawn for pleasure by the artist. Some may be partly fanciful but a number of the views have been identified. The latter category include drawings of Florence, Siena and Prato, and studies of ospizi like Santa Maria del Sasso at Bibiena, the Magdalena on the Via Faentina and Madonna del Lecceto near the Via Pisana which all belonged to the San Marco Convent, and which Fra Bartolommeo must have stayed at on his frequent journeys outside Florence.
Stylistically the landscape drawings can be compared with pen studies dating from before 1509. The flickering, nervous penwork of the Uffizi study of the lost Assumption of 1508 is akin to that of the present sheet, C. Fischer, Disegni di Fra Bartolommeo e della sua Scuola, Florence, 1986, no. 18, fig. 23. The tulip watermark datable circa 1508 on this drawing is also found in four of the Sotheby group: lots 13, 15, 24 and 32.
In some cases pairs of drawings of the same location exist, suggesting that Fra Bartolommeo made a drawing on the spot which he then would later use as a basis of a more finished drawing; for example the Rotterdam and Frankfurt studies of an arch, C. Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo, Master Draughtsman of the High Renaissance, Rotterdam, 1990, nos. 105-6, both illustrated. Although no drawing related to the present one survives, the delicately modulated penwork defining the trees flanking the farmhouse, suggest that it is perhaps a worked up study based on a less refined study drawn on the spot.
Dr. Chris Fischer has, on the basis of a photograph, confirmed the attribution
Unlike the major part of Fra Bartolommeo's drawings, his landscape studies were not made as preparatory designs for painted works. Only three of them have been related to pictures: the farmhouse studies in the sheet at Cleveland for God the Father, Saint Mary Magdalen and Saint Catherine of 1509 at Lucca, the left part of a river landscape in the Courtauld for the Carondelet Madonna of 1511-2 at Besançon and the approach to a village on a hill in the Metropolitan Museum for the lost Rape of Dina, known through the copy by Bugiardini in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The studies of landscape appear to have been drawn for pleasure by the artist. Some may be partly fanciful but a number of the views have been identified. The latter category include drawings of Florence, Siena and Prato, and studies of ospizi like Santa Maria del Sasso at Bibiena, the Magdalena on the Via Faentina and Madonna del Lecceto near the Via Pisana which all belonged to the San Marco Convent, and which Fra Bartolommeo must have stayed at on his frequent journeys outside Florence.
Stylistically the landscape drawings can be compared with pen studies dating from before 1509. The flickering, nervous penwork of the Uffizi study of the lost Assumption of 1508 is akin to that of the present sheet, C. Fischer, Disegni di Fra Bartolommeo e della sua Scuola, Florence, 1986, no. 18, fig. 23. The tulip watermark datable circa 1508 on this drawing is also found in four of the Sotheby group: lots 13, 15, 24 and 32.
In some cases pairs of drawings of the same location exist, suggesting that Fra Bartolommeo made a drawing on the spot which he then would later use as a basis of a more finished drawing; for example the Rotterdam and Frankfurt studies of an arch, C. Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo, Master Draughtsman of the High Renaissance, Rotterdam, 1990, nos. 105-6, both illustrated. Although no drawing related to the present one survives, the delicately modulated penwork defining the trees flanking the farmhouse, suggest that it is perhaps a worked up study based on a less refined study drawn on the spot.
Dr. Chris Fischer has, on the basis of a photograph, confirmed the attribution