Saint James the Less, bust-length, looking to the right

Details

Attributed to Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (Milan 1466/67-1516)
Saint James the Less, bust-length, looking to the right
black chalk, pastel on brown paper
26½ x 20 in. (673 x 508 mm.)

Provenance

Count Arconati.
Marchese Cosnedi.
Zaccaria Sagredo.
Robert Udny.
Sir Thomas Lawrence; Christie's, London, 17-19 June 1830, lot 434 (30 guineas to Woodburn).
Samuel Woodburn, from whom purchased by
The Prince of Orange, later King William II of Holland; The Hague, 12-20 August 1850, lot 10 (as Leonardo da Vinci, sold together with seven other heads from the series for 8,000 florins to 'Weimar').
Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and by descent; Sotheby's, London, 28 June 1962, lot 77 (as Andrea Solario).
David Griffiths; Sotheby's, London, 28 March 1968, lot 8 (as Andrea Solario).

Literature

E. Wright, Some observations made in travelling through France and Italy, London, 1730, pp. 470-71 (as Leonardo da Vinci).
C.-N. Cochin, Voyage d'Italie, Paris, 1758, p. 146 (as Leonardo da Vinci).
J. Sighart, The Lord's Supper. Christ and His Twelve Disciples. From the Original Crayon-Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the Possession of Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar by John Niessen, London, 1868, illustrated (as Leonardo da Vinci).
J. Sighart, Das Abendmahl des Herrn. Christus und die zwölf Apostel. Nach den im Besitze Ihrer Königlichen der Frau Grossherzogin von Sachsen Weimar befindlichen Original-Pastellbildern von Leonardo gezeichnet von Johannes Niessen, Munich, 1874, illustrated (as Leonardo da Vinci).
G. Frizzoni, 'I disegni delle teste degli apostoli nel Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci,' in Archivio storico dell'arte 7, 1894, 1, pp. 41-49 (as Andrea Solario?).
G. Dehio, 'Zu den Kopien nach Lionardos Abendmahl', Jahrbuch der Königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, 1896, 17, pp. 181-5 (as after Leonardo da Vinci).
E. Müntz, Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Thinker and Man of Science, New York and London, 1898, I, p. 191, pl. X (as after Leonardo da Vinci).
B. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, New York, 1903, I, p. 156 (as Andrea Solario).
O. Hoerth, Das Abendmahl des Leonardo da Vinci: Ein Beitrag zur Frage seiner künstlerischen Rekonstruktion, Leipzig, 1907, pp. 198-222, (as after Leonardo da Vinci).
K. Badt, Andrea Solario: Sein Leben und seine Werke, Leipzig, 1914, p. 188 (as after Andrea Solario).
F. Malaguzzi Valeri, La Corte di Lodovico il Moro, II: Bramante e Leonardo da Vinci, Milan, 1915, pp. 534-6, 544, fig. 587 (as Andrea Solario).
F. Lugt, Les Marques de Collections de Dessins & d'Estampes, Amsterdam, 1921, p. 456.
C. Horst, 'L'Ultima Cena di Leonardo nel riflesso delle copie e delle imitazioni', Raccolta Vinciana, 1930-34, no. 14, pp. 172-6 (as after Leonardo da Vinci).
W. von Seidlitz, Leonardo da Vinci, Vienna, 1935, p. 169 (as after Leonardo da Vinci).
B. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Amplified Edition, Chicago, 1938, I, p. 174, note 1 (as Andrea Solario).
K. Clark, Leonardo da Vinci: An Account of His Development as an Artist, Cambridge, 1939, p. 94 (as after Leonardo da Vinci).
E. Möller, Das Abendmahl des Lionardo da Vinci, Baden-Baden, 1952, pp. 103-8, fig. 61 (as after Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio).
B. Berenson, I disegni dei pittori fiorentini, Milan, 1961, I, p. 254, note 1 (as Andrea Solario).
D.A. Brown, Leonardo's 'Last Supper': Precedents and Reflections, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1983, under no. 6, (as Antonio Boltraffio?).
D.A. Brown, Andrea Solario, Milan, 1987, p. 270, note 98 (as after Leonardo da Vinci).

Exhibited

London, Woodburn Gallery, Fifth Exhibition. A catalogue of one hundred original drawings by J. Romano, F. Primaticcio, L. da Vinci, and Pierino del Vaga, collected by Sir Thomas Lawrence, late President of the Royal Academy, 1836, part of no. 75.
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections, 1994, no. 46a.

Lot Essay

Drawn after the head of Saint James the Less, the apostle second from the left of Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the The Last Supper in the monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie outside Milan. The fresco was commissioned in 1495 and finished 1498, duing Leonardo's first stay in Milan at the court of the Sforza Duke Ludovico il Moro. The impact of the fresco was immediate, and a number of earlier drawn responses to it are known, of which the sequence of heads to which the present drawing and the following lot belong are perhaps the most accurate. Indeed, the drawings in the group are of such high quality and so close to the fresco that until the end of the 19th Century they were thought to be Leonardo's own cartoon for the project. This accuracy suggests that the artist was in Leonardo's immediate circle. The drawings have since been attributed Andrea Solario, who was in Milan from 1495-1507 and is thought to have painted a version of the composition for the refectory of the Convento dei Gerolomini at Castellazzo. However they do not quite fit with his known drawings. More convincingly, David Alan Brown has pointed to the close relationship between the heads in the series and drawings by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, one of Leonardo's leading pupils in the period (D.A. Brown, op. cit., 1983, under no. 6). Two highly finished portrait drawings by Boltraffio in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, are very similar in technique and handling to the heads of the Apostles (L. Cogliati Arano, Leonardo all'Ambrosiana: Il Codice Atlantico. I disegni di Leonardo e della sua cerchia, exhib. cat., Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 1982, nos. 34-5).
The medium of the drawings in the series also indicates a close relationship with Leonardo's circle. It was he who first took full advantage of the possibilities of pastel, most notably in the Portrait of Isabella d'Este, now in the Louvre, of 1499-1500 (F. Viatte, L©eonard de Vinci, dessins et manuscrits, exhib. cat., Paris, Musáe du Louvre, 2003, no. 61).
At least eleven drawings from the series are known. Two are in the National Gallery of Art, Melbourne, a third, the head of Saint Simon, was sold at Sotheby's, London, 23 March 1978, lot 106. The major group of eight drawings, including the present drawing and the following lot, remained together into the collections successively of Sir Thomas Lawrence, King William II of Holland and the Grand Dukes of Saxe-Weimar, until 1968 when the group was broken up in a sale in London.

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