Saint Michael and his angels fighting the angels of the dragon

Details

Domenico Campagnola (Padua 1500-1564)
Saint Michael and his angels fighting the angels of the dragon
pen and brown ink
15 7/8 x 9 ½ in. (40.5 x 24.2 cm)

Provenance

with Colnaghi, Old Master Drawings, London, 1982, no. 12, pl. 11.

Literature

M. Clayton, ‘Drawings by Domenico Campagnola after Giusto de Menabuoni’s Apocalypse Frescoes,’ Master Drawings, XLII, 2004, no. 4, pp. 315-332, fig. 19.

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Lot Essay

Martin Clayton observed that this drawing, a series of 22 in the Royal Collection, and a further five so far discovered elsewhere, are all closely based on the Apocalypse fresco cycle painted by the 14th-Century artist Giusto de’Menabuoni as part of his decoration of the Baptistery in the Duomo, Padua, around 1376-1378. There are 42 such scenes in Giusto's cycle, and Campagnola probably drew as many, perhaps in the 1550s. He may have hoped to capitalize on the great popularity of Dürer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, first published in 1498 and subsequently made available in Venice in a series of crude copies to a Venetian text of 1516, but the engravings never materialised.

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