Girolamo Muziano (Brescia 1528-1592 Rome)
Girolamo Muziano (Brescia 1528-1592 Rome)

A rocky gorge with a mill

Details
Girolamo Muziano (Brescia 1528-1592 Rome)
A rocky gorge with a mill
black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash (slightly sunk), watermark three flowers
12 5/8 x 8¼ in. (320 x 210 mm.)
Provenance
W. Esdaile (L. 2617 and L. 816), with inscription '1836.300' (verso); Christie's, London, 18 June 1840, part of lot 190 (with lots 189 and 191, £2.6s. to Lee).
Stichting Collectie P. en N. de Boer; Christie's, London, 4 July 1995, lot 12.
Exhibited
Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen, Verzameling P. en N. de Boer, 1966, no. 159.

Lot Essay

The attribution was kindly confirmed by Taco Dibbits who will include the drawing in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Muziano's drawings. Two other landscapes by Muziano, which appear to be from the same series since they share the same format, technique and watermark, are in the Uffizi (N. Dacos, Fiamminghi a Roma, artistes des Pays-Bas et de la principauté de Liège à Rome à la Renaissance, exhib. cat., Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1995, nos. 141-2).
The present drawing is strikingly similar, although not directly related, to the series of landscapes with hermits and penitent saints engraved by Cornelis Cort after Muziano's drawings and published cum privilegio Pope Gregory XIII in 1573-5 (Holl. 107-111, 116-117, 121 and 123). Muziano's landscapes spring from the Venetian tradition tempered by the Northern influence of his master Lambert Sustris. However, as Karel van Mander reported, his landscapes have a 'powerful, strong, fantastic manner different from those of the Northerners, something rarely seen among the Italians' (K. van Mander, Schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 192v, quoted in N. Dacos, op. cit., p. 262).

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