BATTISTA FRANCO, DIT IL SEMOLEI | Mucius Scaevola putting his hand in the fire in front of Porsenna

Collection Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1774), Paris (L. 2097), avec son montage avec le cartouche portant l'attribution : Hieronimus Carpensis; 
Sa vente, Paris, 15 novembre 1775 - 30 janvier 1776, n° 338 du catalogue de François Basan : «Girolamo da Carpi », Deux Sujets en travers, faits à la plume, dont le Triomphe de Neptune, &c., 9 livres, 10 sols (avec n° 339 par Carpioni); Acquis par Charles Philippe Campion de Tersan (1736-1819), Paris;
Collection comte Moritz von Fries (1777-1826), Vienne (L. 2903), avec le n° 948 sur le montage; 
Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913), Londres; 
John Malcolm de Poltalloch (1805-1893), Londres : avec numéro imprimé 299 sur le montage ; légué à son beau-fils, The Honourable Alfred Erskine; 
Gathorne Hardy (1845-1918), Londres (son ex-libris au verso, à l'encre brune : 28); légué à son fils, The Honourable Geoffrey Malcolm Gathorne-Hardy (1878-1972); 
Légué à son cousin The Honourable Robert Gathorne-Hardy (1902-1973); 
Sa vente, Londres, Sotheby's, 24 novembre 1976, n°11, repr.; 
Galerie Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel, Munich 1992; 
Fond Finacor, Paris; 
Vente anonyme, New-York, Christie's, 28 janvier 1999, n°34, repr.; 
Acquis par W.M Brady; 
W.M Brady & Co. Inc et Thomas Williams Fine Art Ltd., Old Master Drawings, New York 2000, n^o6 (notice par A. Varick Lauder); 
Acquis en 2005.

Londres, P.& D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Loan Exhibition of Drawings by Old Masters from the Collection of Mr. Geoffrey Gathorne-Hardy, 1971, n° 57, repr. ; 
Caen, musée des Beaux-Arts, L'Œil et la Passion. Dessins italiens de la Renaissance dans les collections privées françaises, 2011, pp.140-141, n°39, repr. (notice par P. Ramade) ;
Rennes, 2012, n^o5 (notice par A. Varick Lauder)

J. C. Robinson, Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters, Forming the Collection of John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Esq., Londres, 1869, p. 115, n° 299 : « Girolamo da Carpi » ; 
Hon. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Drawings by the Old Masters in the Possession of the Hon. A.E. Gathorne-Hardy, Londres, 1902, p. 17, n°26 ; 
A. Varick Lauder, notice sur le dessin de Battista Franco, Old Master Drawings, cat. exp. New-York, 2000, n°6, repr. : « Battista Franco » ; 
E. Saccomani, 'Battista Franco alla Corte di Urbino: Dai Perduti Affreschi del Duomo ai Modelli per Le Maioliche Istoriate', dans Valter Curzi (dir.), Pittura Veneta nelle Marche, Milan, 2000, p.233, note 107 ; 
A. Varick Lauder, Battista Franco. 1510-1561. His Life and Work with Catalogue Raisonné, thèse de doctorat, 4. vol., Cambridge, University of Cambridge, 2004, II, p.490, n°272 DA, IV, fig.481 ; 
A. Varick Lauder, Musée du Louvre, inventaire général des dessins italiens, t. VIII: Battista Franco, Paris, 2009, p.138, pp.210-211, sous n°43 et p.240 sous n°70

Laid down on the Mariette mount , which is in good condition, slightly trimmed at the top. There is some light foxing and light brown staining scattered around the sheet. Sold unframed.
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This complex, refined sheet is a wonderful example of Battista Franco’s elegant and fluid pen and ink style, distinguished by precise and delicate contours and meticulous hatching.  The subject, taken from Roman history, is very characteristic of the artist, but was also probably one of the reasons that the great collector Pierre Jean Mariette attributed it to Girolamo da Carpi, an Emilian artist with a similarly delicate and refined way of drawing, whose graphic œuvre comprises many copies after the Antique.  Indeed, Mariette himself wrote in his catalogue of the Crozat collection that he sometimes had difficulty telling the works of the two artists apart. ¹  The attribution to Girolamo da Carpi is inscribed in the cartouche of the exquisite and well preserved Mariette mount, which further enhances the drawing’s handsome mise en page.  It was Philip Pouncey who first questioned Mariette’s attribution, suggesting, in the catalogue of the 1971 exhibition of the Gathorne-Hardy collection, that the drawing is instead by Battista Franco, an attribution now universally accepted by scholars.  Anne Varick Lauder was the first to recognize, in 1999 (see Provenance), that the drawing is in fact a study for maiolica, noting the connection with the plate by the master called Mazo,² now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (fig. 1).  In her Rennes exhibition catalogue entry for the drawing, she further observed that the sheet is on the same scale as this maiolica plate; Franco is focusing here on studying the preliminary composition to be provided to the maiolica decorator-painter, who will have to execute ad litteram his design.  Clearly Franco is not yet taking into account here the circular shape or depth of the plate, and is concerned only with spelling out the position of each figure, and defining the ornate brazier in the centre of the composition.  The plate was probably made as part of a service illustrating episodes taken from Roman history, datable between 1544 and 1551, a commission that Franco could have executed for the brother-in-law of the Duke of Urbino, the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589).  A more finished drawing, based on the present composition but smaller in size and with some differences, is in the Louvre, as is a further drawing also identified by Lauder, as a representation by Franco of the same subject, but unconnected with this composition or project.³

Franco was the first major Italian artist to make designs specifically for the decoration of important maiolica services.  According to Vasari, who knew him well, it was Duke Guidobaldo II della Rovere, having realized Franco’s talent and outstanding skills as a designer on a small scale, who commissioned the artist to make drawings for maiolica decorators, who had previously relied for the most part on compositions taken from prints.⁴  In fact, it appears from Vasari’s account that the decorators of maiolica had generally been perfectly satisfied with adapting existing compositions from the vast body of printed images that was at their disposal, particularly those based on the works of major artists such as Raphael.  Franco’s activity in this area must have begun around the mid 1540s, when he was involved in the decoration of the vault of the choir of the Cathedral in Urbino, a project he completed by the summer of 1546.

According to Vasari, Franco had a particular obsession with drawings, and he must have regarded them as the most valid form of expression for an artist, not merely studies executed in relation to the preparation of a finished work.  His activity across all the major artistic centres of Italy, from Venice and Rome to Florence and Urbino, helped make him a highly sophisticated master, who expressed his artistic talent in the elegant and fluid lines of his pen drawings, as is abundantly clear in the splendid Adrien sheet.

^1. See A. Varick Lauder, Battista Franco, Inventaire general des dessins italiens, VIII, Paris 2009, p. 138

^2. This plate was done in Venice around 1550, by the master Mazo, demonstrated by the inscription on the verso of the dish. See A. Alverà Bortolotto, Maiolica a Venezia nel Rinascimento, Bergamo 1988, p. 64, reproduced p. 65. According to A. Varick Lauder the decoration is clearly based on the present design by Franco.    

^3. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. nos. 4948, 4949; A. Varick Lauder, cit., 2009, pp. 210-211, no. 43 reproduced, and in colour p. 101, pl. 21; ibid. pp. 239-240, no. 70,  reproduced (recto).

^4. G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1881, vol. VI, pp. 581-582.