Some Italian drawings in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

upon 27-30 March last year, I was in Paris with sum of two units of my colleagues from the National Galleries of Scotland in order to visit the annual Salon du Dessin held at the Salon Hoche. The raison d'etre was a buying trip for the Scottish Print field and there, incidentally, we did manage to acquire a fine double-sided sheet by dint of Domenichino for his celebrated altarpiece of the Last Communion of St Jerome and a delightful Tischbein landscape. (1) I later left my colleagues hoping that I might gain access to the Cabinet de Dessins of the Bibliotheque de Arts Decoratifs belonging to the Union Centrale de Arts Decoratifs. As upon previous occasions, I again failed to diocese any drawings in the original, but--through the kind offices of Mme Veronique de la Hogue Conservateur of the Department de Papiers-peints--I did manage to search end the Library's files of photographs of many of theft drawings.

The collections, in spite of being in a prominent wing of the Louvre upon the Rue de Rivoli, appear to be little known through scholars of Italian art. Having singled without fourteen drawings as being of special interest, I was able to go [i]or[/i] come back to Paris on 18 September for the opening of the Louvre's terracotta exhibition, 'L'esprit createur'. In spite of having written previously, I was permitted to diocese only four drawings in the original, because the plays in which the drawings are housed are still undergoing refurbishment. I can appreciate on what account officials do not exactly encourage visitors, as greatest in quantity of the collection is pasted into albums and the paper is brittle and acidic. The first drawing I inspected was a cast for a fountain (Fig 1) It is in inscribe and brown wash over traces of black chalk, and measures 205 x 223 cm (2) Described as 'Ecole Francais, Anonyme, fin XVIe', the drawing appears to be Italian. It displays an octagonal basin decorated with rectangular panels in depressed relief with--reading from left to right--male figures fighting with satyrs, putti supporting a chequered coat of arms, and a battle of tritons. The cincture above consists of a smaller vase-shaped basin ornamented with satyr masks in relief, and tower aboveed by a globe with fountain jet issuing from dolphins. upon the globe, there sits an imperial double-headed eagle with a blank shield upon its breast. The whole composition is overtoped by the crown of the set apart Roman Empire. The fountain was clearly made for the Kingdom of the sum of two units Sicilies and shows the arms, below, of Pedro Toledo (1484-1553) Viceroy of Naples from 1532 until his death. The arms above are those of the Emperor Charles V (1500-58) The graphic mode of expression is a little stiff, on the other hand reminiscent of the late drawings Polidoro da Caravaggio (c 1490-c 1543) Polidoro went to Naples after the Sack of Rome and the sheet may be a workshop design for individual of the decorations that we know Polidoro made for the access of Charles V into Messina in 1535

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The next to the first sheet, Putti male nudes, and the foreshortened head of a man is in commit to paper and brown wash with white heightening (confined to the head) upon blue paper, and measures 165 x 23 cm (Fig 2) (3) Described by the agency of the Museum as 'Ecole Italien XVIe', it is an entirely characteristic and handsome early sheet by the agency of Francesco Parmigianino (1503-40), and must date from c 1522-24 The putti are above all reminiscent of sum of two units drawings in the Louvre for the sottarco of the first chapel upon the left in S Giovanni Evangelista, while the rather yielding smudged black chalk head of a girl upon the verso, which is alone visible through the backing paper and therefore cannot be reproduc here, looking up and lit from the upper left may be for the head of the eponymous saint in Parmigianino's Martyrdom of St Agatha in the identical chapel at s Giovanni Evangelista. (4) The sheet, which is recorded as having belonged to 'Bodkin'--very possibly Thomas Bodkin (1887-1961) perhaps best known for his part as the director of the Barber Institute, Birmingham--was left to the Museum by dint of a Monsieur Mosticher in 1966 The head looking upwards at the bottom of the sheet appears to have been copied after a bust of the Emperor Vespasian, either based on an ancient prototype or a late version, possibly from a put of busts of the Twelve Caesars. (5)

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Another fine drawing is the finished application of mind called by the museum 'Ecole Francaise, XVIe' (Fig 3) for the Paniere Farnese or Farnese silver bread basket engraved through Francesco Villamena, the remnants of which are now in the Farnese Collection at the Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (Fig 4) (6) The drawing is in indite and brown wash, and measures 265 x 21 cm We know that the Paniere was designed by means of Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), and this drawing is indeed a handsome example of Annibale's penmanship with halt the symmetrical design complet and cot [i]or[/i] coteed vertically down the centre to act as the finished modello for Villamena. It, like sum of two units earlier Annibale studies for the Paniere in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, was execut c 1597 (7)