Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum DRAWINGS Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum DRAWINGS Los Angeles THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM Frontispiece: HANS BOL Flemish, 1534-1593 Landscape with the Story of Venus and Adonis [detail] Bodycolor heightened with gold on vellum 92.GG.28 (See no. 56) At the J. Paul Getty Museum: Christopher Hudson, Publisher Mark Greenberg, Managing Editor Benedicte Gilman, Editor Suzanne Watson Petralli, Production Coordinator Charles Passela, Photographer Text for the Italian, French, Spanish, and British schools prepared by Nicholas Turner; text for the German and Swiss and for the Dutch and Flemish schools prepared by Lee Hendrix Designed and produced by Thames and Hudson and copublished with the J. Paul Getty Museum © 1997 The J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive Suite 1000 Los Angeles, California 90049-1687 Library of Congress Card Number 96-23151 ISBN 0-89236-438-6 Color reproductions by CLG Fotolito, Verona, Italy Printed and bound in Singapore by C.S. Graphics CONTENTS DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD 6 NOTE TO THE READER 7 ITALIAN SCHOOL 8 GERMAN AND SWISS SCHOOLS 54 DUTCH AND FLEMISH SCHOOLS 70 FRENCH SCHOOL 84 SPANISH SCHOOL 116 BRITISH SCHOOL 120 INDEX OF ARTISTS 128 DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD This book offers a sampling of the Getty Museum's five hundred-odd drawings, every one of which has been bought within the past fifteen years. Such a rapid growth deserves explanation. J. Paul Getty died in 1976, leaving to his museum an unexpected legacy worth seven hundred million dollars. Getty's art collection—which was installed in his house in Malibu and opened to the public in 1954, then moved twenty years later to the reconstructed Roman villa he had built for the purpose—was an expression of his personal taste and always narrow in scope: there were Classical antiquities, French furniture and decorative arts, and European paintings. There were no drawings. In 1981 it was evident to the trustees (who were also envisioning new programs for scholarship, conservation, and education that would be undertaken by the Getty Trust) that the Museum's collections could not only be strengthened but also diversified. When the well-known Rembrandt chalk drawing Nude Woman with a Snake (no. 62) appeared at auction, George Goldner, an art historian and drawings collector who was serving as head of the Museum's photo archive, persuaded the Board that they should buy it. They did, and subsequently took his recommendations for several dozen more purchases. When I arrived in 1983, we established a curatorship and a Department of Drawings, and George Goldner spent a decade building the collection energetically and shrewdly. He has been succeeded by Nicholas Turner, whose purchases since 1993 have added to the strength of the collection and altered its shape. Drawings were a natural choice for the Getty Museum. They have a logical relation with our paintings and sculpture, and since many excellent drawings still remained in private hands, we had a chance of creating a distinguished group. Since drawings are the most direct works of art, they have an unusual appeal to museum visitors. Their spontaneity helps make them accessible, and so does the fact that most of us have struggled with drawing ourselves. The aim of the collection is to represent the different schools of European drawing until 1900 with examples of the first quality. In 1981 few would have thought it possible to succeed so well. Sales from English country houses such as Chatsworth (in 1984 and 1987) and Holkham (in 1991) were a boon. In general, however, the market has been increasingly impoverished, and the brilliant rarities of the 1980s seldom appear. Since fewer fine older drawings are available nowadays, the focus of the collection has shifted somewhat, toward eighteenth- and nineteenth-century examples. The collection is being published in a series of catalogues: Volume 1, by George R. Goldner, with the assistance of Lee Hendrix and Gloria Williams, in 1988; Volume 2, by George R. Goldner and Lee Hendrix with the assistance of Kelly Pask, in 1992; 6 DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD Volume 3, by Nicholas Turner, Lee Hendrix, and Carol Plazzotta, in 1997. Volume 4 is in preparation. The text of this book was written by Nicholas Turner and Lee Hendrix, who have my warm thanks. As I write, a gallery for regular exhibitions of drawings from the collection is being finished at the new Getty Museum at the Getty Center in west Los Angeles, which is to open at the end of 1997. Plans are being made for loan exhibitions of drawings as well. We hope above all that readers who make discoveries in this book will come to see the drawings themselves. JOHN WALSH Director NOTE TO THE READER In the dimensions height precedes width; diameter is abbreviated Diam. List of abbreviated catalogue references: Cat. I = George R. Goldner et al. European Drawings, vol. 1. Catalogue of the Collections. Malibu, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1988. Cat. II = George R. Goldner and Lee Hendrix. European Drawings, vol. 2. Catalogue of the Collections. Malibu, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1992. Cat. Ill = Nicholas Turner, Lee Hendrix, and Carol Plazzotta. European Drawings, vol. 3. Catalogue of the Collections. Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997. NOTE TO THE READER 7 1 ANDREA MANTEGNA Italian, circa 1431-1506 Study of Four Saints: Peter, Paul, John the Evangelist, and Zeno Pen and brown ink, traces of red chalk on book held by Saint Zeno 19.5 x 13.1 cm (7 11/16 x 5 3/16 in.) Cat. I, no. 22; 84.GG.91 The four saints occur in the left-hand wing of the triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints, known as "The Altarpiece of San Zeno," painted by Mantegna in 1456-59 for the high altar of the Church of San Zeno, Verona, and still in situ. It is one of the great Renaissance altarpieces, and it marks an important turning point in the history of painting from the late Gothic toward the new style. The figures in all three panels are unified by a common architectural setting—an open-sided pavilion capped by a heavy cornice, the elaborately decorated piers of which occupy what appears as empty space above the figures in the drawing. Visible in the drawing's lower left and right corners are the profiles of the bases of the columns of the frame. The relationship of the figures to the overall format of the space is one of the most important differences in composition between the drawing and the painting, and it shows that the artist was toying with the idea of massing the figures to the left to reveal an open gap to the right rather than spreading them evenly across the whole area, as in the end result. Mantegna is one of the great masters of the Renaissance in northern Italy. He was especially absorbed by the then-current revival of art and letters that occurred throughout much of Italy under the influence of classical models. His mature paintings are imbued with this new fascination for the classical past. Like nos. 8-9, 11-13, 16, 20, 22, 51, 59, 61, and 63, this drawing formerly belonged to the dukes of Devonshire at Chatsworth House, England (see the D collection mark, surmounted by a ducal coronet, that appears in the lower right of this sheet and on most of the other drawings). 8 ITALIAN SCHOOL 2 LEONARDO DA VINCI Italian, 1452-1519 Studies for the Christ Child with a Lamb Pen and brown ink and black chalk 21 x 14.2 cm (8¼ x 59 /16 in.) Cat. II, no. 22; 86.GG.725 Leonardo probably made this drawing in preparation for a painting of the Virgin and Child with Saint John, now lost but known through copies, one of which is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Three of the studies in the present sheet are in ink, while another three are faintly drawn in black chalk. The number of different sketches for the same figure group indicates the painter's painstaking approach to the planning of his compositions. Leonardo, who was left-handed, inscribed the drawing at the top of the sheet and on the reverse in his characteristic mirror script, that is, with backwards writing. Leonardo was the most versatile genius of the Italian Renaissance—a musician, scientist, inventor, and thinker as well as an artist. He must also rate as one of the greatest draftsmen in the history of Western European art, possessing prodigious powers of observation as well as great technical facility in various media. He was born near Vinci, in Tuscany, and trained in Florence, where he spent his early career, before transferring to Milan (1481—99). He returned to Florence in 1500, where he remained, with interruptions, until 1506; it was in this period that he must have made the present drawing. ITALIAN SCHOOL 9