.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Born in Florence, Raffaellino del Garbo – named after the street (via del Garbo) where the artist maintained a workshop from 1499 –, trained in the studio of Filippino Lippi (A. Cecchi, 'Filippino and His Circle, Designers for the Decorative Arts', in the Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997, p. 40). According to Vasari, Raffaellino’s later paintings failed to live up to the promise of his youth, and the author suggested that the artist had been distracted from his art by the pressure of his large family. Vasari, however, does note the quality of the artist’s embroidery designs stating that there, 'issued from his hand most beautiful designs and fancies […for patrons] who used them for embroidery […] that show how able he was in draughtsmanship. […] Wherefore, in return for this benefit, although poverty caused him misery and hardship during his lifetime, he deserves to have honour and glory for his talents after his death.'
The present drawing, which is pricked for transfer and worked up with pen, wash and heightening, is such an embroidery design (Ames-Lewis and Wright, op. cit., p. 82). Ames-Lewis and Wright have suggested that the drawing was probably used as a cartoon while still only a chalk drawing, as the wings continue beyond the original framing and are not pricked. Raffaellino might have worked up the pure chalk drawing after the transfer process, possibly to provide the embroiderers with a more finished and clear design which would allow them to follow the artist's instructions more closely (ibid., p. 82). These observations have been accepted with some reservation by Carmen Bambach, although she has suggested that the arch might not be an original element (as Raffaellino was in the habit of pricking his frames for compositions) and the overlapping wing was later completed (Bambach, op. cit., p. 133).
Few of Raffaellino's embroidery studies have survived, and fewer still can be connected to surviving embroideries. An exception to this are four drawings in the Uffizi that are related to Raffaellino’s most ambitious commission, the so-called Passerini ceremonial vestments, ordered by the Cortonese Cardinal Silvio Passerini (1470-1529), now in the Museo Diocesano, Cortona (Cecchi, op. cit., p. 41). Another drawing, which can loosely be connected to an embroidery fragment showing the Archangel of the Annunciation in the Collegiate church of San Martin, Pietrasanta, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1912 12.56.5a; C.C. Bambach in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, no. 116). That sheet is particularly close to the present drawing: Raffaellino also went over the pricked drawing with pen and ink and heightened the sheet with white bodycolour. They are closely related in style too, and they clearly display Filippino Lippi's influence, depending on figures, for example, in Filippino's tondos from 1483-1484 in the Museo Civico, San Gimignano (ibid., p. 116, pls. 13 and 14).
The present drawing, which is pricked for transfer and worked up with pen, wash and heightening, is such an embroidery design (Ames-Lewis and Wright, op. cit., p. 82). Ames-Lewis and Wright have suggested that the drawing was probably used as a cartoon while still only a chalk drawing, as the wings continue beyond the original framing and are not pricked. Raffaellino might have worked up the pure chalk drawing after the transfer process, possibly to provide the embroiderers with a more finished and clear design which would allow them to follow the artist's instructions more closely (ibid., p. 82). These observations have been accepted with some reservation by Carmen Bambach, although she has suggested that the arch might not be an original element (as Raffaellino was in the habit of pricking his frames for compositions) and the overlapping wing was later completed (Bambach, op. cit., p. 133).
Few of Raffaellino's embroidery studies have survived, and fewer still can be connected to surviving embroideries. An exception to this are four drawings in the Uffizi that are related to Raffaellino’s most ambitious commission, the so-called Passerini ceremonial vestments, ordered by the Cortonese Cardinal Silvio Passerini (1470-1529), now in the Museo Diocesano, Cortona (Cecchi, op. cit., p. 41). Another drawing, which can loosely be connected to an embroidery fragment showing the Archangel of the Annunciation in the Collegiate church of San Martin, Pietrasanta, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1912 12.56.5a; C.C. Bambach in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, no. 116). That sheet is particularly close to the present drawing: Raffaellino also went over the pricked drawing with pen and ink and heightened the sheet with white bodycolour. They are closely related in style too, and they clearly display Filippino Lippi's influence, depending on figures, for example, in Filippino's tondos from 1483-1484 in the Museo Civico, San Gimignano (ibid., p. 116, pls. 13 and 14).