Agostino Tassi

Sir Joshua Reynolds (L.2364);
William Esdaile;
Purchased from P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London, 1947 (£10)

London, Royal Academy, The Paul Oppé Collection, 1958, no. 452

P. Ward-Jackson, Italian Drawings, 17th-18th Century, London, 1980, II, pp. 86-87, under no. 811

Laid down. Sheet has been cut around the edges and is irregular at left and right margins. The ink has sunk in several places and there are a few tiny tears and holes in the sheet, the most noticeable is along the sleeve of the musician to the far right of the sheet but there are a number of smalls tears located in the faces and hats of the other musicians. Light staining throughout the sheet and overall surface dirt. The medium remains strong and vibrant and the drawing retains its liveliness.
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This lively and animated group of musicians belongs to a small series of pen and ink drawings by Tassi that depict figures playing musical instruments.  Three comparable sheets of groups of music-makers are at the British Museum¹, a group of five standing musicians was with Christie's in 2003² and three separate figure studies engaged in playing an instrument are at the Victoria and Albert Museum.³  Two music-making women also feature in a drawing in the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.⁴  All these drawings share the same energetic use of pen and ink that creates a lyrical quality most fitting for the subjects portrayed. 

The present drawing bears inscriptions in pen and ink below the group of musicians: ingilese and tedeschi.  One of the drawings at the British Museum, Three Women Playing Musical Instruments, is also inscribed in what appears to be the same hand:  le spanieul.  These inscriptions, and the fact that one of the other drawings at the British Museum illustrates five Turkish musicians, reinforce the link between these sheets and indicate that they may have been studies for a particular project or commission that required a diverse group of figures involved in a musical procession.  The present sheet is also inscribed, upper left, agosti. Tassi 10., and similar inscriptions with different numbering appear on two of the drawings at the British Museum, The Five Turkish Musicians (agost. Tassi. 15.) and Centaurs playing musical instruments (agost. Tassi 19).  These inscriptions with their various numbers, as Turner points out, are likely to have been added by a later owner of the drawing and may indicate the sequence in which they featured in an album.⁵

Numerous pentimenti and visible adjustments to the figures can be seen in most of the sheets discussed.  These are clearly working drawings and show Tassi tirelessly re-working the figure until he was satisfied with the pose.  We also see small additional sections of paper where a correction has been made or added, in this case at the left margin by the musician's foot and also in two of the British Museum studies.  Patrizia Cavazzini discusses Tassi's multiple corrections and re-workings of figures in his drawings in the catalogue to the 2008 Tassi exhibition in Rome.⁶ 

It is possible that some of these studies were ideas for the staffage in some of Tassi's paintings, but there is no doubt there is a strong theme that links all these sheets, and ultimately they must be regarded as 'working' drawings that were possibly intended for a single specific project.  Both Jacob Hess and Pugliatti date these figure studies to c. 1615 and Hess believed that the exotic Turkish and oriental subjects were inspired by the artist Giulio Parigi, whom Tassi encountered during his time in Florence in the second decade of the century.⁷

The figures depicted in these vivacious and dynamic sketches educate us in Tassi's working method and as Nicholas Turner comments, 'in style and character they anticipate to a remarkable degree Claude's figure studies for landscape'.⁸

^1. N. Turner, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Roman Baroque Drawings c.1620 to 1700, London 1999, cat, no. 302 (Three Women Playing Musical Instruments), no. 303 (Five Turkish Musicians playing instruments) and no. 304 (Centaurs playing musical instruments)

^2. Sale, London, Christie's, 9 July 2003, lot 8

^3. P. Ward-Jackson, Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogues: Italian Drawings, volume Two 17th-18th Century, pp. 86-87, no. 811

4. Rotterdam, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, inv. no. 1.1230

5. N. Turner, op.cit., p. 200, under no. 303

6. Agostino Tassi, exhib.cat., Rome, Palazzo di Venezia, 2008, pp. 26-27

7. N. Turner, op.cit., p. 200, under no. 302

8. Ibid.