* Paolo Caliari, called Il Veronese Verona 1528 - 1588 Venice

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Description

Paolo Caliari, called Il Veronese
a female allegorical figure
bears inscription, verso: et la Buona Fortuna: queste due ne portano le due vittorie per mari una se l'altra per tera. Ricevute queste s'entra in Signoria; poi se viene a la Ricchezza; la qual dono la liberalita ... col arme [?] agli huomini Benefitio ... qui si termina con honore la vita, la fama vittorie e forme [?] della maesta con splendore dell'Imperio /... Una donna nuda aggiongi dale una sfera in riposo [?] ala sopra li capelle ... dello Imperio ... mano.;
point of the brush and brown ink and wash, heightened with white on greenish-gray prepared paper

Provenance

Jonathan Richardson, Snr. (L.2184);
De Clementi (?) (L.521a; this mark and the previous one were on the former mount, and are no longer present);
Benno Geiger, his sale, London, Sotheby's, 7-10 December, 1920, lot 367 (as School of Veronese)

Exhibited

Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Veronese Disegni e Dipinti, 1988 (catalogue by W.R. Rearick), cat. no. 30, reproduced plate 30

Literature

R. Cocke, 'A New Veronese Chiaroscuro', Master Drawings, vol. 25, no. 3, 1987, p. 260, reproduced plate 19

Catalogue Note

Richard Cocke published this as an important addition to the corpus of Veronese's chiaroscuro drawings, pointing out that it was the first such drawing by the artist to have a nude subject. He traces the evolution of the pose to Veronese's interest in the works of Michelangelo, and he relates it to Veronese's own decorations for the Barbaro family villa at Maser. He dates this, and the other chiaroscuro drawings, to the 1550s and believes they were done as independent works of art.

Cocke compares the inscription on the verso with those on two other drawings (the Allegory of Fortune in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, and the Triumph of Good Repute over Evil in the Albertina, Vienna) and suggests that they were added later by a collector who may have imposed his own interpretation on the subjects; Cocke believes the subject of the present drawing is in fact Providence. Roger Rearick, however, in his Venice exhibition catalogue entry (loc. cit.), identifies the subject as La Fortuna Terrestre and discusses the iconography more closely in relation to the other chiaroscuro drawings of single figures which he believes may have had a literary source. He dates the present drawing circa 1581-2. A copy of this drawing, by Benedetto Caliari, is in the Louvre (see Venice exhibition catalogue, op. cit., fig. 86).