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Lot Essay
More than 160 drawings by Fragonard illustrating Ariosto's Orlando Furioso are known, of which 137 share a common source. Hippolyte Walferdin is said to have bought the drawings from Fragonard's heirs in the 19th Century, although nothing is known of their history before that.
It is not known who commissioned the drawings, or if indeed they were commissioned at all. 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 sketchy, and could not be used by engravers. The presence of wash on most of the drawings excludes the possibility that 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 the Italian text very closely and, instead of combining different scenes in one image as his predecessors had done, he clearly separated every episode. Of the 46 canti, he illustrated the first third, but only a few of the remainder. It is not clear whether he abandoned the project or whether a number of drawings have been lost.
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 (see lot 109) '..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 frequently 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 has married Medoro, a Saracen. This leads to numerous scenes involving fights or stories of love between pagans and Christians. The story was particularly popular in France around 1780, when a new translation by d'Ussieux was published.
It is not known who commissioned the drawings, or if indeed they were commissioned at all. 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 sketchy, and could not be used by engravers. The presence of wash on most of the drawings excludes the possibility that 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 the Italian text very closely and, instead of combining different scenes in one image as his predecessors had done, he clearly separated every episode. Of the 46 canti, he illustrated the first third, but only a few of the remainder. It is not clear whether he abandoned the project or whether a number of drawings have been lost.
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 (see lot 109) '..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 frequently 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 has married Medoro, a Saracen. This leads to numerous scenes involving fights or stories of love between pagans and Christians. The story was particularly popular in France around 1780, when a new translation by d'Ussieux was published.