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Lot Essay
Dr. Christiane Andersson has kindly confirmed the attribution to Graf in a communication dated 5 September 2001, and suggests a date of 1521. Dr. Andersson notes that Graf purposely misdated at least one other drawing which although dated 1529 must have been drawn in 1519. Of the earlier scholars, Karl Parker considered it to be an early drawing of 1511, Hans Koegler accepted the early date but suggests that the monogram is later, while Walter Lüthi dates it to 1521.
The Bodmer drawing is comparable with the Mercenary soldier and a monster in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which shows similarly wild shorthand for the distant woods and mountains, with a boat seen across the peaceful lake below the figure's outstretched arm, J. Rowlands, The Age of Dürer and Holbein, exhib. cat., British Museum, London, 1988, no. 184. The pose of the figure in the Bodmer drawing, with a broad brow and inclined head modulated with parallel hatching, is found in the female supporter in the Marshalled coat of arms of Urs Graf and Sibylla von Brunn in the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, inv. no. U.X.34, B. Butts and L. Hendrix, Painting on Light, exhib. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, no. 136.
Graf's notoriously dissolute life is reflected in the scenes of warriors and prostitutes that form the major themes of the approximately 200 surviving drawings attributed to him. He served as a mercenary on at least four campaigns in Lombardy and Burgundy between 1510 and 1521, and was at the traumatic defeat of the Swiss forces at Marignano in 1515, and drew on these experiences in his finished studies of outlandish warriors who even in triumph seem to have the dark shadow of defeat at their shoulder. Likewise his life as a sought-after goldsmith, designer of stained glass and printmaker in Basel was frequently turbulent. His marriage in 1511 to Sibylla von Brunn, member of a leading Basel family, coincided with her being disinherited in the same year, and the relationship does not appear to have been peaceful. In 1518 Graf was forced to flee to his home town of Solothurn to escape charges of attempting to murder a beggar, and in 1522 he was jailed for beating his wife and consorting with prostitutes. This second strand is reflected in Graf's frequent depictions of whores and camp-followers, although like his warriors these women are often confronted by the consequences of their profession. Indeed, it has been suggested that a drawing in Basel of a raddled woman with a wooden leg and no arms represents the pendant to the Bodmer drawing, the generosity of the girl's plump embrace leading inexorably to disability caused by venereal disease (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, inv. no. U.I.58). There may even be a personal subtext to Graf's misdating of the present drawing: drawn in 1521 at the nadir of his moral reputation it looks back to 1511, the year of his marriage.
The letter 'M', in the present example inscribed on the girl's hat, figures frequently in Graf's drawings, for example on a pendant worn by the Girl in a wide-brimmed hat in Schloss Georgium, Dessau (inv. no. B.IV.19). Dr. Andersson suggests that this stands for Minne (courtly love), and associating the figures with moral concepts (C. Andersson, op. cit., p. 247) , while Hugelshofer follows Karl Parker in suggesting that 'M' is the initial of a particular individual, W. Hugelshofer, Swiss Drawings, Masterpieces of Five Centuries, exhib. cat., Washington, Smithsonian Institute, and elsewhere, 1967, p. 24. Indeed Parker goes further and suggests that the woman is Magdalena Offenburgh, a beauty who was the wife of a Basel patrician and is the conjectured model for Hans Holbein the Younger's Lais of Corinth, the courtesan of antiquity who was the lover of the painter Apelles (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, inv. no. 322).
The Bodmer drawing is comparable with the Mercenary soldier and a monster in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which shows similarly wild shorthand for the distant woods and mountains, with a boat seen across the peaceful lake below the figure's outstretched arm, J. Rowlands, The Age of Dürer and Holbein, exhib. cat., British Museum, London, 1988, no. 184. The pose of the figure in the Bodmer drawing, with a broad brow and inclined head modulated with parallel hatching, is found in the female supporter in the Marshalled coat of arms of Urs Graf and Sibylla von Brunn in the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, inv. no. U.X.34, B. Butts and L. Hendrix, Painting on Light, exhib. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, no. 136.
Graf's notoriously dissolute life is reflected in the scenes of warriors and prostitutes that form the major themes of the approximately 200 surviving drawings attributed to him. He served as a mercenary on at least four campaigns in Lombardy and Burgundy between 1510 and 1521, and was at the traumatic defeat of the Swiss forces at Marignano in 1515, and drew on these experiences in his finished studies of outlandish warriors who even in triumph seem to have the dark shadow of defeat at their shoulder. Likewise his life as a sought-after goldsmith, designer of stained glass and printmaker in Basel was frequently turbulent. His marriage in 1511 to Sibylla von Brunn, member of a leading Basel family, coincided with her being disinherited in the same year, and the relationship does not appear to have been peaceful. In 1518 Graf was forced to flee to his home town of Solothurn to escape charges of attempting to murder a beggar, and in 1522 he was jailed for beating his wife and consorting with prostitutes. This second strand is reflected in Graf's frequent depictions of whores and camp-followers, although like his warriors these women are often confronted by the consequences of their profession. Indeed, it has been suggested that a drawing in Basel of a raddled woman with a wooden leg and no arms represents the pendant to the Bodmer drawing, the generosity of the girl's plump embrace leading inexorably to disability caused by venereal disease (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, inv. no. U.I.58). There may even be a personal subtext to Graf's misdating of the present drawing: drawn in 1521 at the nadir of his moral reputation it looks back to 1511, the year of his marriage.
The letter 'M', in the present example inscribed on the girl's hat, figures frequently in Graf's drawings, for example on a pendant worn by the Girl in a wide-brimmed hat in Schloss Georgium, Dessau (inv. no. B.IV.19). Dr. Andersson suggests that this stands for Minne (courtly love), and associating the figures with moral concepts (C. Andersson, op. cit., p. 247) , while Hugelshofer follows Karl Parker in suggesting that 'M' is the initial of a particular individual, W. Hugelshofer, Swiss Drawings, Masterpieces of Five Centuries, exhib. cat., Washington, Smithsonian Institute, and elsewhere, 1967, p. 24. Indeed Parker goes further and suggests that the woman is Magdalena Offenburgh, a beauty who was the wife of a Basel patrician and is the conjectured model for Hans Holbein the Younger's Lais of Corinth, the courtesan of antiquity who was the lover of the painter Apelles (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, inv. no. 322).