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Lot Essay
The present picture is an important rediscovery and has never previously been properly discussed or reproduced. Its existence was noted on more than one occasion in the nineteenth century, and it has also been referred to in passing more recently. It is related to three preparatory drawings by the artist. The earliest is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris: executed in red chalk, it shows the entire composition in considerable detail, and is squared and pricked for transfer. Given its high degree of finish, it is reasonable to suppose that it was preceded by a number of more experimental preliminary ideas, now lost. It was followed by a second compositional drawing, executed in pen and wash over black chalk underdrawing, in the Uffizi, Florence (see the catalogue of the 1986/7 exhibition, op. cit., pp. 244-5, no. 38; and Fig. 1 in this catalogue). This sheet has traces of spolvero (the black chalk dust used to transfer a pricked design from one sheet of paper to another), which might appear to suggest that it was traced from the Louvre drawing. However, a third, intermediate drawing must have intervened between the other two, because the architecture of the Uffizi sheet is differently proportioned, and therefore cannot have been pounced directly from the Louvre drawing. A final sheet of detailed figure studies, also in red chalk, is in Darmstadt.
Comparison of the present picture with the two compositional drawings reveals closer similarities with the sheet in Florence. Such details as the inset panel on the left spandrel of the arch, the rosettes on the adjacent capital, and the hole in the center of the arch itself are all common to the Uffizi drawing and the painting, but are absent from the Louvre study. In certain other respects, such as the suppression of Mary and Joseph's haloes, the panel marks a development away from both drawings.
In the past, various hypotheses were advanced to explain the function of the drawings, and it was even suggested that they were made for Domenico Alfani, who executed an altarpiece of the composition, albeit in reverse, now in the Gallery in Perugia. Alfani is known to have used drawings by his friend Raphael and by Rosso Fiorentino, and the reversal of one of the figures in the Darmstadt sheet seemed to provide additional support for this thesis. However, the existence of the present picture proves that the drawings were meant to lead to a painting by Sarto himself.
It remains to be determined whether this Adoration is an exceptionally early example of a bozzetto - or oil sketch - or simply an unfinished work. Although there can be no absolute certainty, it seems more likely to be the latter, mainly because the degree of finish of the more resolved areas does not suggest the spontaneity of a work in progress. Nevertheless, it is one of the undoubted charms of this extraordinary survival that a considerable part of the surface is so freely brushed in, and that so much of the confident and economical underdrawing remains visible.
The preparatory drawings - and consequently the painting - are generally agreed to date to the early 1520s. All are close in style to the frescoes of the Dance of Salome and the Annunciation to Zacharias of 1522-3 in the Chiostro degli Scalzi, Florence. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that a drapery study in the Uffizi, made for the fresco of the Tribute to Caesar of 1519-21 in the Medici Villa at Poggio a Caiano, was re-used in the present work.
A copy of an unpublished typescript by Professor John Shearman entitled An Unfinished Adoration of the Magi by Andrea del Sarto [no date] which was presented at a conference at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is available prior to the auction and to the eventual purchaser of the painting.
Comparison of the present picture with the two compositional drawings reveals closer similarities with the sheet in Florence. Such details as the inset panel on the left spandrel of the arch, the rosettes on the adjacent capital, and the hole in the center of the arch itself are all common to the Uffizi drawing and the painting, but are absent from the Louvre study. In certain other respects, such as the suppression of Mary and Joseph's haloes, the panel marks a development away from both drawings.
In the past, various hypotheses were advanced to explain the function of the drawings, and it was even suggested that they were made for Domenico Alfani, who executed an altarpiece of the composition, albeit in reverse, now in the Gallery in Perugia. Alfani is known to have used drawings by his friend Raphael and by Rosso Fiorentino, and the reversal of one of the figures in the Darmstadt sheet seemed to provide additional support for this thesis. However, the existence of the present picture proves that the drawings were meant to lead to a painting by Sarto himself.
It remains to be determined whether this Adoration is an exceptionally early example of a bozzetto - or oil sketch - or simply an unfinished work. Although there can be no absolute certainty, it seems more likely to be the latter, mainly because the degree of finish of the more resolved areas does not suggest the spontaneity of a work in progress. Nevertheless, it is one of the undoubted charms of this extraordinary survival that a considerable part of the surface is so freely brushed in, and that so much of the confident and economical underdrawing remains visible.
The preparatory drawings - and consequently the painting - are generally agreed to date to the early 1520s. All are close in style to the frescoes of the Dance of Salome and the Annunciation to Zacharias of 1522-3 in the Chiostro degli Scalzi, Florence. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that a drapery study in the Uffizi, made for the fresco of the Tribute to Caesar of 1519-21 in the Medici Villa at Poggio a Caiano, was re-used in the present work.
A copy of an unpublished typescript by Professor John Shearman entitled An Unfinished Adoration of the Magi by Andrea del Sarto [no date] which was presented at a conference at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is available prior to the auction and to the eventual purchaser of the painting.