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Lot Essay
This landscape drawing was first published in 1925 and has been in a private collection since the 1920s. Over the years this sheet, together with a few other drawings by Titian related to his woodcuts, has been the object of extensive scholarly attention. These drawings are very important within the artist’s small graphic corpus as it was through woodcuts that Titian introduced landscape as an independent subject into Italian art.
The drawing has a very distinguished provenance, counting amongst its owners the most famous collectors and connoisseurs of the 18th and 19th Centuries: Pierre Crozat, Pierre-Jean Mariette, Sir Thomas Lawrence and William Esdaile, among others.
It was Mariette who first connected this study with Titian’s woodcut of Saint Jerome in the wilderness (fig. 1; Mariette, op. cit., 1741, no. 663) where the cluster of trees appears on the left side of the composition in reverse. The motif of the castle in the background recurs instead in another famous woodcut, the Landscape with a milkmaid, executed by the Vicentine wood cutter Nicolò Boldrini who often collaborated with Titian (Rosand and Muraro, op. cit., p. 143).
Over the decades, and until today, most scholars have recognized in this sheet an autograph drawing by Titian; in 1976 Konrad Oberhuber described it as one of the most grandiose landscape studies by the artist (op. cit., p. 32). Some scholars, however, have challenged the attribution. In particular, in 1979 Peter Dreyer studied the group of Titian drawings connected to woodcuts and argued that these sheets, including the present one, are not preparatory studies for the prints, but rather counterproofs taken from the prints or directly from the wood blocks and partially touched up (Dreyer, op. cit., pp. 369-370). Dreyer concluded that these drawings were deliberate forgeries made probably in the block-cutter’s workshop by some assistant who had easy access to the blocks or at least to fresh impressions of the prints. Dreyer’s argument relates not only to the present drawing but also to others, including a study with a Group of trees in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 08.227.38).
In 1981 David Rosand discussed Dreyer’s position regarding the Metropolitan sheet, pointing out that, while the main premise for Dreyer’s argument is that there should be an exact correspondence between the drawings and the woodcuts from which they would have been counter-proofed, in reality this is not the case for the Metropolitan drawing (D. Rosand, ‘Titian Drawings: A Crisis of Connoisseurship?’, Master Drawings, XIX, no. 3 (Autumn 1981), pp. 300-308). Similarly, when the present drawing is closely compared to the cluster of trees in the woodcut of Saint Jerome in the wilderness the details do not correspond exactly. In 2001 William Rearcick, once again pointing out the differences between the details of the tree and of the castle in the drawing and in the prints, argued that the present sheet is an original study by Titian used as a source of motifs for the woodcuts. The somewhat damaged condition of the sheet does not help with clarifying the question of its attribution.
Fig. 1. After Titian, Saint Jerome in the wilderness. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The drawing has a very distinguished provenance, counting amongst its owners the most famous collectors and connoisseurs of the 18th and 19th Centuries: Pierre Crozat, Pierre-Jean Mariette, Sir Thomas Lawrence and William Esdaile, among others.
It was Mariette who first connected this study with Titian’s woodcut of Saint Jerome in the wilderness (fig. 1; Mariette, op. cit., 1741, no. 663) where the cluster of trees appears on the left side of the composition in reverse. The motif of the castle in the background recurs instead in another famous woodcut, the Landscape with a milkmaid, executed by the Vicentine wood cutter Nicolò Boldrini who often collaborated with Titian (Rosand and Muraro, op. cit., p. 143).
Over the decades, and until today, most scholars have recognized in this sheet an autograph drawing by Titian; in 1976 Konrad Oberhuber described it as one of the most grandiose landscape studies by the artist (op. cit., p. 32). Some scholars, however, have challenged the attribution. In particular, in 1979 Peter Dreyer studied the group of Titian drawings connected to woodcuts and argued that these sheets, including the present one, are not preparatory studies for the prints, but rather counterproofs taken from the prints or directly from the wood blocks and partially touched up (Dreyer, op. cit., pp. 369-370). Dreyer concluded that these drawings were deliberate forgeries made probably in the block-cutter’s workshop by some assistant who had easy access to the blocks or at least to fresh impressions of the prints. Dreyer’s argument relates not only to the present drawing but also to others, including a study with a Group of trees in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 08.227.38).
In 1981 David Rosand discussed Dreyer’s position regarding the Metropolitan sheet, pointing out that, while the main premise for Dreyer’s argument is that there should be an exact correspondence between the drawings and the woodcuts from which they would have been counter-proofed, in reality this is not the case for the Metropolitan drawing (D. Rosand, ‘Titian Drawings: A Crisis of Connoisseurship?’, Master Drawings, XIX, no. 3 (Autumn 1981), pp. 300-308). Similarly, when the present drawing is closely compared to the cluster of trees in the woodcut of Saint Jerome in the wilderness the details do not correspond exactly. In 2001 William Rearcick, once again pointing out the differences between the details of the tree and of the castle in the drawing and in the prints, argued that the present sheet is an original study by Titian used as a source of motifs for the woodcuts. The somewhat damaged condition of the sheet does not help with clarifying the question of its attribution.
Fig. 1. After Titian, Saint Jerome in the wilderness. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.