- 108
Attributed to Girolamo da Carpi
Estimate
12,000 - 18,000 USD
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Description
- Girolamo da Carpi
- Recto: Nymphs and Satyrs;Verso: Putti and Figures
- Pen and brown ink (recto); red chalk (verso);
bears old attribution in pen and brown ink, on a label on the verso of the mount: Raffaello. d'Urbino. and numbering 3.3.
Catalogue Note
According to Vasari, Girolamo received his first training as an artist from his father, a minor decorative painter who was employed around 1503-04 by the Este of Ferrara.1 Girolamo may have been a garzone in the Ferrara studio of Garofalo at the beginning of the 1520s, before moving to Bologna. The recto of the present sheet shows a strong Ferrarese influence, together with many elements derived from Raphael and Giulio Romano, particularly evident in the female nymph, seen from the back, in the center foreground of the composition.
On the verso, the putti at the top of the sheet, executed in red chalk, could be copied from a lost Raphael drawing after Michelangelo. In fact these figures appear in Michelangelo's frescoed vault of the Sistine Chapel, located, respectively, below and behind the Persian Sibyl. If this drawing is indeed by Girolamo, it must date from his early career, around the time of his move from Ferrara to Bologna.
1. G. Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, Florence 1881, vol. VI, p. 469