Cosimo Ulivelli

Nathaniel Hone (L.2793);
with Galerie Emmanuel Moatti, Paris; acquired in 1994

Sold mounted and framed in a modern gilded wooden frame. Laid down. Some stains along the joints of the separate pieces of paper. A few tiny holes, and some creases in the paper. A small v-shaped patch made up on the upper edge, to the left of the centre. Some staining around the outside edges. Otherwise the condition is very good.
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This extraordinary drawing is a very rare example of a preparatory study for a large silver dish, a piatto da parata. Like the objects themselves, the drawings for astonishing works of art of this type have seldom survived.  Among the few such drawings that are still in existence, perhaps the most notable are the four designs by Carlo Maratti for silver dishes called 'Piatti di San Giovanni', now in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth.¹ Maratti's drawings are similar to the present work in overall scale and conception, though circular rather than oval, and slightly smaller in size.

The so-called Piatti di San Giovanni represented episodes in the history of the Medici family, and were presented annually to the Grand Duke of Tuscany on the feast day of Saint John (one of the patron saints of Florence), in accordance with the will of Cardinal Lazzaro Pallavicini. The cardinal died in 1680, but the tradition continued until the death of last of the Medici, Gian Gastone, in 1737. The series ultimately consisted of no fewer than fifty-eight splendid plates, which are known today only from plaster casts made by the Ginori family as records for the Doccia porcelain factory, and eventually donated by the Marchese Ginori Lisci to the Museo degli Argenti, in Palazzo Pitti, Florence.² Unfortunately, the original dishes suffered the same fate as most other silver artefacts from this period, particularly secular ones; they were melted down during the French occupation in 1800.  

The dish for which this is the design must surely have been lost in the same way.  Like the Medici series, though, it must have been made as part of an important commission, either as a ceremonial gift, or to commemorate a great event - possibly, to judge by its subject-matter, a wedding.  No such commission has yet been identified, but perhaps further archival research will eventually reveal exactly for whom, and when, this remarkable object was made. To render the composition effectively in relief, the silversmiths would have begun by hammering out the design from a sheet of silver worked from the back, and then the salver would have been finished from the front with smaller hammers and tools for chasing the surface. It was thus that the astonishingly gifted silversmiths of the time were able from designs such as this to create spectacular, virtuoso objects, intended for display on a cabinet or buffet as symbols of the power and wealth of their owners.

Since so few drawings of this type and scale survive, without the help of a documented commission, their attribution can be problematic. The style of drawing that we see here, though clearly influenced by Pietro da Cortona, is very close to that of the Florentine artist Baldassare Franceschini, called il Volterrano.  Volterrano's work is, however, often confused with that of one of his main assistants and collaborators Cosimo Ulivelli, and it is to Ulivelli that this drawing can most convincingly be attributed.  Ulivelli seems to have enjoyed a considerable reputation during his long life, and decorated vaults and ceilings which can still be seen in many Florentine churches.  Throughout his work, we see the same Cortonesque air that is evident in this drawing, an influence that Ulivelli received via his master, Volterrano. This quality is equally apparent in a stylistically similar drawing, representing the Martyrdom of Two Female Saints (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which bears an early attribution to Ulivelli in the hand of Jonathan Richardson, Jr.^3, and   displays a comparable handling of the chalk and rendering of the draperies.

 

1. See Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings, 4 vols., London 1994, Roman and Neapolitan Schools, pp. 129-32, cat. nos. 252-55, reproduced

2. For futher information on the series see Jennifer Montagu, Metal Sculpture of the Roman Baroque, New Haven and London 1996, pp. 92-116.

3. See J. Patrick Cooney, 'A Drawing by Cosimo Ulivelli in the Sperling Bequest', in Master Drawings, vol. XI, no. 4, 1973, p. 382, reproduced pl. 37