Diana and her nymphs surprised by Actaeon (recto); The Virgin with the suckling Child (verso)

Details

Vincenzo Tamagni (San Gimignano 1492-circa 1530)
Diana and her nymphs surprised by Actaeon (recto); The Virgin with the suckling Child (verso)
with number 'No 248' (verso)
black chalk (recto), pen and brown ink on red prepared paper (recto and verso)
5 ½ x 7 3/8 in. (14.2 x 18.8 cm)

Provenance

Giovanni Morelli (1816-1891), Milan and Bergamo (L. 1902, with his inscription ‘Vincenzo Tamagni’ (recto) and ‘Vincenzo Tamagni San Gimignano’ (verso).
Gustavo Frizzoni, Milan, on deposit at the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1906.
Charlotte von Prybram-Gladona, Salzburg.
with Kurt Meissner, Zurich, 1990 (this and the above according to the Landolt typescript catalogue), from whom acquired by Robert Landolt.

Literature

F. Malaguzzi Valeri, I disegni della R. Pinacoteca di Brera. Novantaquattro tavole riproducenti a colori i più notevoli disegni della importante raccolta milanese, Milan, 1912, no. 11 (as Venetian School, 16th Century?).
B. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Chicago and London, 1938, I, p. 143, II, p. 354, nos. 2756I and 2756J, III, figs. 364 and 369.
D. Rust, ‘The Drawings of Vincenzo Tamagni da San Gimignano’, in National Gallery of Art. Report and Studies in the History of Art, II, 1968, nos. BB22 and BB22v.
C. von Prybram-Gladona, Unbekannte Zeichnungen alter Meister aus europäischem Privatbesitz, Munich, 1967, nos. 37 and 37a, ill.
G. Bora, G. Agosti et al., eds., I disegni della collezione Morelli, Cinisello Balsamo, 1988, p. 333, no. 259, recto ill.
E. Pagliano, De chair et d'esprit. Dessins italiens du musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, 2010, pp. 48-49, n. 9, under no. 8.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Correctly attributed to Tamagni by Giovanni Morelli, its earliest known owner, this spirited double-sided sheet was probably part of a sketchbook which gathered ideas for two separate compositions. The Virgin and Child on the recto constitutes an early sketch for the enthroned group featured at the centre of a Sacra Conversazione with the Virgin and Child and six saints further developed by Tamagni on three sheets in the Musée de Grenoble, Biblioteca Reale, Turin and the Princeton Art Museum (see Pagliano, op. cit., figs. 8, 8.1, 8.2). Each sheet shows an increasing degree of finish for the composition, probably executed by Tamagni in preparation for an altarpiece, like the panel in San Gerolamo, in his native San Gimignano (1522), or the Sacra Conversazione in the church of San Francesco, Pomarance (1525). Remarkably, each of the four sheets carries studies for the story of Diana and Actaeon on the verso (op. cit., figs. 8 verso, 8.3, 8.4). Quickly rendered in pen and ink, the present one shows Actaeon still in his human form, as in the sheet in Grenoble, while he is already transformed into a stag in the Turin and Princeton drawings. Tamagni was active in Rome in Raphael’s workshop at the Farnesina.

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