Attributed to Tomasso Vincidor and an Unidentified Netherlandish Artist

Willard B. Golovin, New York, 
by whose Estate sold ("Property from the Estate of Willard Golovin"), New York, Sotheby's, 23 January 2003, lot 55 (as Tomasso Vincidor and an Unidentified Netherlandish Artist)

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, 2002 (ex-catalogue)

Laid down on thick card. Drawn over two main sheets of paper - the head is silhouetted. There are various areas of fragmented pieces of paper throughout. Upper right corner is made up of several fragments. There are losses in some areas that have been made up and filled in (with red chalk). There is a hole near his lower lip that has been made up and all along the lower margin there are a number of holes that have been made up and filled in. There is an area under his eye - on his cheekbone that looks like the white has oxidized slightly. Overall colors remain strong. Sold in carved and gilded frame.
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This is a fragment of the original cartoon for the tapestry depicting The Adoration of the Magi (fig. 1), one of a major series of twelve tapestries representing episodes from The Life of Christ, generally known as the Scuola Nuova tapestries.  These tapestries were made to be hung during the Christmas and Easter periods in the ‘sala del Consistorio secreto’ of the Vatican (possibly the space now occupied by the Sala Regia).  The series seems to have been commissioned shortly after the death of Pope Leo X on 1 December 1521, probably by his cousin Pope Clement VII, and the tapestries were completed by June 1531.

The original designs for the compositions were made by an artist in Raphael’s circle, most probably Giulio Romano.  From these initial drawings, none of which are known, full-size cartoons would have been prepared, and like the earlier cartoons representing The Acts of the Apostles, executed by Raphael and his workshop in 1515 (Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, on loan to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London), the Scuola Nuova cartoons were sent to Brussels for weaving there in the workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst. 

The attribution of the cartoons themselves has been much discussed.  Vasari records that Raphael’s assistant Tommaso Vincidor was sent to Flanders by Pope Leo X in 1520, shortly before the commissioning of the Scuola Nuova tapestries, to supervise the weaving of papal tapestries that was being undertaken there, and this reference has led Nicole Dacos to conclude that the cartoons were the work of Vincidor.¹   James Byam Shaw, writing a few years earlier about fragments of the cartoons preserved at Christ Church, Oxford, classified them as “Studio of Giulio Romano”², while Philip Pouncey and John Gere attributed the two related works at the British Museum to Gianfrancesco Penni³, who was, together with Giulio, the principal carrier of the torch of Raphael’s style, completing a number of the commissions that were left unfinished upon the master’s untimely death in 1520.   Carmen Bambach, in her comprehensive and carefully argued recent catalogue entry for another fragment from the same cartoon, favours the more even-handed artist line: ‘School of Raphael: Tommaso Vincidor or Gianfrancesco Penni’.⁴  It also seems possible that a further, northern hand intervened in the designs to some extent: the previously unnoticed inscription on the present drawing, which has so far defied transcription but may well be a color note, does seem to be in a northern rather than an Italian hand.

It appears that only one set of tapestries was ever woven from the Scuola Nuova cartoons; eleven of the twelve tapestries are today in the Vatican Collections.  The cartoons seem to have survived intact until the mid-17^th century, when they came into the possession of Rembrandt’s pupil, Govert Flinck.  It is generally reported that Flinck cut them into sections, keeping the parts that he found most interesting.  Thereafter, Nicolas Dorigny (1658-1746) is recorded as having obtained 104 of the fragments, and Jonathan Richardson Senr. a further group of more than 50.⁵  Today, the largest surviving group (20 fragments) is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.⁶     

In addition to the fragment in the Tobey Collection, referred to above, two more fragments from the Adoration of the Magi cartoon are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.⁷  Even though all these surviving drawings are small fragments of the original cartoon, each of these impressive, large and strongly characterised heads functions very effectively as a complete, independent work of art.  Moreover, through their distinctive technique, in which powerful, clear outlines (intended for easy and accurate copying by the weavers) are elaborated with broad layers of bold color, the studies serve as fascinating documents of the role of drawing in the production of these imposing papal tapestries.  

1.  N. Dacos, ‘Raphaël et les Pays-Bas: L’École de Bruxelles,’ in Studi su Raffaello : Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi (Urbino-Firenze 6-14 aprile 1984), Urbino 1987, vol. I, pp. 611-23

2.  J. Byam Shaw, Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, 2 vols., Oxford 1976, vol. I, pp. 135-37, nos. 457-60

3.  P. Pouncey and J.A. Gere, Raphael and his Circle. Italian Drawings in the Depratment of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 2 vols., London 1962, vol. I, pp. 80-81, nos. 137-38, vol. 2, pl. III

4.  An Italian Journey. Drawings from the Tobey Collection: Correggio to Tiepolo, exhib., cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010, pp. 26-27, no. 7 (entry by C.C. Bambach)

5.  Bambach, loc. cit., cites K.T. Parker, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, vol. 2, Italian Schools, Oxford 1956, pp. 326-30, quoting W. Gunn, Cartonensia, or, An historical and critical account of the tapestries in the palace of the Vatican: copied from the designs of Raphael of Urbino, and of such of the cartoons whence they were woven as are now in preservation, London 1831, pp. 25-27, as the source for this information

6.  Parker, loc. cit., nos. 599-619

7.  Inv. 22.72.1 and 22.72.2; reproduced Bambach, loc. cit., p. 28, figs. 7.1 and 7.2