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Lot Essay
The composition of this drawing is known (in reverse) from an anonymous etching of which a unique impression survives at the British Museum (fig. 1; inv. 1850,0527.47; see E.A. Carroll, Rosso Fiorentino. Drawings, Prints, and Decorative Arts, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1987-1988, no. 103, ill.; and C. Jenkins, Prints at the Court of Fontainebleau, c. 1542-47, Ouderkerk aan den IJssel, 2017, III, no. Anon. 7, ill.). It has not been related to any painting, but credited with the design is one of the leading masters responsible for the flourishing of the arts at the court of Francis I, the Florentine artist Rosso Fiorentino (Carroll, op. cit.). However, as Catherine Jenkins has noted, ‘in the fussy Fontainebleau etching, much […] Rossoesque characteristics are lost, as are the distinctive stylized lines of [his] drawings’ (op. cit., p. 214). Indeed, Rosso’s style comes through more perfectly in no less than four drawn versions of the composition: apart from the previously unknown version presented here, these are a sheet at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (album Réserve B-5 (A, 5)-boîte fol.); one formerly in the Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg Feitelson Arts Foundation, Santa Barbara (sold Christie’s, New York, 30 January 1998, lot 204); and a later drawing in the British Museum, which bears a monogram ‘BAR’ and the date 1567 (inv. 1863,0110.6; all discussed in Carroll, op. cit., p. 328, where a painted version is mentioned as well).
None of the drawings can be attributed to Rosso himself, and for the version in Paris an attribution to Léonard Thiry (circa 1500-after 1550) has recently been suggested (H. Gasnault, Leonard Thiry invenit. Recherches sur un peintre flamand de l'École de Fontainebleau, master’s thesis, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, 2010, I, no. 42, ill.). The name of the Netherlandish-born Thiry, whose draftsmanship was deeply influenced by Rosso’s, could also be proposed for the present sheet, but more likely all are due to unidentified hands from Rosso’s circle at Fontainebleau. The work under discussion has the distinction, however, of being the most complete – and thus possibly the earliest – of the four versions: whereas the cartouche in the drawings in Paris and London is empty, as it also is in the etching, and it only seems to include a seated figure in the sheet formerly in Santa Barbara, it here clearly shows two figures, one seated, one standing, perhaps representing the Fall of Man. The three heads at the top of the composition symbolize the Holy Trinity, placing the central scene of the new-born Christ and his parents under the sign of Salvation.
Fig. 1. Anonymous, after Rosso Fiorentino, The Holy Family in a cartouche. Etching. British Museum, London.
None of the drawings can be attributed to Rosso himself, and for the version in Paris an attribution to Léonard Thiry (circa 1500-after 1550) has recently been suggested (H. Gasnault, Leonard Thiry invenit. Recherches sur un peintre flamand de l'École de Fontainebleau, master’s thesis, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, 2010, I, no. 42, ill.). The name of the Netherlandish-born Thiry, whose draftsmanship was deeply influenced by Rosso’s, could also be proposed for the present sheet, but more likely all are due to unidentified hands from Rosso’s circle at Fontainebleau. The work under discussion has the distinction, however, of being the most complete – and thus possibly the earliest – of the four versions: whereas the cartouche in the drawings in Paris and London is empty, as it also is in the etching, and it only seems to include a seated figure in the sheet formerly in Santa Barbara, it here clearly shows two figures, one seated, one standing, perhaps representing the Fall of Man. The three heads at the top of the composition symbolize the Holy Trinity, placing the central scene of the new-born Christ and his parents under the sign of Salvation.
Fig. 1. Anonymous, after Rosso Fiorentino, The Holy Family in a cartouche. Etching. British Museum, London.