拍品专文
More than 160 drawings by Fragonard illustrating Ariosto's Orlando Furioso are known, and amongst them 137 drawings come from a common source. Hyppolyte Walfredin is said to have bought the drawings from Fragonard's heirs in the 19th Century, although nothing is known before the series entered his collection.
It is not known who commissioned the drawings, or even if they were commissioned. They were obviously not intended to be engraved: unlike the preparatory series for the tales of La Fontaine which are very precise, the Ariosto drawings are very sketchy, and could not be used by engravers. The presence of wash on most of the drawings excludes the possibility they were made as first sketches to be counterproofed and reworked, as was the case for the La Fontaine series, for which an album of black chalk preparatory drawings is in an American private collection, E. Williams, Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, exhib. cat, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1978, pp. 152-3.
Fragonard followed very closely the Italian text and, instead of combining different scenes in one image as his predecessors had done, he clearly separated every episode. But of the 46 canti, he only illustrated the first third, with the exception of the fifth canto and illustrated very few of the remaining thirty. It is not clear whether he abandoned the project or whether a number of drawings have been lost.
The works Fragonard illustrated were La Fontaine's tales, in three different series, the largest existing one comprising 57 drawings, and Don Quixote for which there are thirty extant drawings. Probably Fragonard on realising the enormity of the task involved in illustrating Orlando Furioso, stopped halfway through.
The series has been dated to the 1780s, E. Mongan et al., op. cit., by comparison with the La Fontaine drawings of the 1770s. The dating to the 1780s was confirmed by Pierre Rosenberg quoting a text of Théophile Fragonard, the grandson of Jean Honoré '..l'on peut dire qu'il survécu 25 ans à son public car il avait 75 ans en 1806...C'est dans ce temps là qu'il fit plusieurs centaines de dessins sur le poème de 'Roland furieux...', P. Rosenberg, Fragonard, exhib. cat., Paris, Grand Palais, 1987, p. 508.
Orlando Furioso, an epic poem, was published by Ludovico Ariosto in 1516, but was revised numerous times right up to his death in 1532. It tells the story of Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, who in love, with Angelica, a Christian, goes mad when he learns that she married Meodoro, a Saracen. Numerous scenes involving fights or stories of love between pagans and christians are described in this poem. The story was particularly popular in France around 1780, when a new translation by d'Ussieux was published.
The present drawing illustrates the moment when the twenty brigands returning to their cave discover Orlando with Isabella. Ariosto describes the foreground brigand as 'one-eyed and with the other eye squinted'
It is not known who commissioned the drawings, or even if they were commissioned. They were obviously not intended to be engraved: unlike the preparatory series for the tales of La Fontaine which are very precise, the Ariosto drawings are very sketchy, and could not be used by engravers. The presence of wash on most of the drawings excludes the possibility they were made as first sketches to be counterproofed and reworked, as was the case for the La Fontaine series, for which an album of black chalk preparatory drawings is in an American private collection, E. Williams, Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, exhib. cat, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1978, pp. 152-3.
Fragonard followed very closely the Italian text and, instead of combining different scenes in one image as his predecessors had done, he clearly separated every episode. But of the 46 canti, he only illustrated the first third, with the exception of the fifth canto and illustrated very few of the remaining thirty. It is not clear whether he abandoned the project or whether a number of drawings have been lost.
The works Fragonard illustrated were La Fontaine's tales, in three different series, the largest existing one comprising 57 drawings, and Don Quixote for which there are thirty extant drawings. Probably Fragonard on realising the enormity of the task involved in illustrating Orlando Furioso, stopped halfway through.
The series has been dated to the 1780s, E. Mongan et al., op. cit., by comparison with the La Fontaine drawings of the 1770s. The dating to the 1780s was confirmed by Pierre Rosenberg quoting a text of Théophile Fragonard, the grandson of Jean Honoré '..l'on peut dire qu'il survécu 25 ans à son public car il avait 75 ans en 1806...C'est dans ce temps là qu'il fit plusieurs centaines de dessins sur le poème de 'Roland furieux...', P. Rosenberg, Fragonard, exhib. cat., Paris, Grand Palais, 1987, p. 508.
Orlando Furioso, an epic poem, was published by Ludovico Ariosto in 1516, but was revised numerous times right up to his death in 1532. It tells the story of Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, who in love, with Angelica, a Christian, goes mad when he learns that she married Meodoro, a Saracen. Numerous scenes involving fights or stories of love between pagans and christians are described in this poem. The story was particularly popular in France around 1780, when a new translation by d'Ussieux was published.
The present drawing illustrates the moment when the twenty brigands returning to their cave discover Orlando with Isabella. Ariosto describes the foreground brigand as 'one-eyed and with the other eye squinted'