佩德羅·費爾南德斯·德·穆爾西亞 - 或稱仿布拉曼蒂諾者（約1489-1523年活躍於米蘭及拿波里）

Dr. Michel Gaud
Sold: Sotheby's Monaco, June 20, 1987, lot 30 (as 'Ecole milanaise, vers 1510')
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

Giulio Bora, Pseudo Bramantino: Disegni e dipinti leonardeschi dalle collezioni Milanesi, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1987-88, under no. 13, p. 65, reproduced
Marco Tanzi, "Pedro Fernandez da Murcia, lo Pseudo Bramantino: Un pittore girovago nell'Italia del primo Cinquecento," exhibition catalogue, Castellone, Chiesa della Trinità, 1997, p. 130, D2

Window mounted. Vertical tear, c 2 cm, towards top right corner. Light stains towards top right corner, and various smaller spots elsewhere, especially towards upper left. Light crease, bottom right corner. Paper surface somewhat dirty. Remains of old mounting tabs adhering to the reverse in all four corners. Chalk very good and fresh. Sold in a carved and gilded frame.
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Delicately and subtly drawn in red chalk, with continuous and firm contours so as to integrate the figure in space, this fascinating and rare drawing is an important witness to the profound impact that Leonardo’s prolonged stay in Milan, from 1481/2 until 1499, had on this artistic center.  Leonardo’s arrival provoked various responses, enriching the repertoire of several painters, and resulting in a new fashionable style that built on a characteristic monumentality already established by the pivotal personality of Bramante (For more informantion on Bramante’s drawings see: F. Rossi, ‘A proposito della fortuna del disegno bramantesco,’ Bramante a Milano, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, 2015, pp. 109-115). The melding of these two complex artistic worlds resulted in a fascinating period of innovation, and also in the emergence of a particularly attractive and distinctive graphic language, which was adopted by a number of the artists active in Milan at this time. 

This fine figure study was first associated by Giulio Bora and Nancy Ward Neilson (see Literature, 1987-88) with one of the most charismatic and eccentric personalities who worked in Milan during this period, Pedro Fernández da Murcia, known as Pseudo Bramantino.  As Ballarin has noted, the artist must have reached Milan around 1489, as part of the retinue accompanying Isabella of Aragon, when she arrived as the bride of the Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza (A. Ballarin, ‘Riflessioni sull'esperienza milanese dello Pseudo Bramantino,’ in Leonardo a Milano. Problemi di leonardismo milanese tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento. Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio prima della Pala Casio, Verona 2010, vol. I, pp. 46-64). Pseudo Bramantino most probably left Milan around 1503 for Naples. Surely drawn from life, the study represents a naked model seen almost in profile, sketching on a piece of paper, seated on a book that rests on an oval shaped box.  The artist has built up the volumes and forms through delicate, smooth shading in red chalk, creating a subtle chiaroscuro, which contrasts with the pronounced contour, executed in a strong, continuous line. The sheet must date from after 1500, when the use of red chalk became much more widespread among Leonardesque artists, due to awareness of Leonardo’s magnificent red chalk studies for the Last Supper, executed between 1492 and circa 1498, as a result of which this versatile technique rapidly became recognised for its great potential to create subtle and warm variations of tone and effective rendering of light and shadow. The refined modelling of the figure in the present sheet is also emphasized by a raking light, coming from top left.

Only a handful of drawings have ever been associated with the work of Pseudo Bramantino (M. Tanzi, op. cit., pp. 130-131, nos. D1 [Budapest, Szépmüvészéti Museum, inv. no. 1771], D3 and D4 [Naples, Capodimonte Museum, inv. nos. 933, 934]), and no others in red chalk, so it is not surprising that this drawing was previously attributed to various artists, from Bramantino to Giovanni Agostino da Lodi.  As Bora pointed out, though, in his publication of 1987-88, there are two highly Leonardesque figure drawings in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, which can be convincingly compared in style with the present sheet, even though they are executed in the very different media of silverpoint, heightened with white, on blue prepared paper (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, inv. Cod. F 263 inf. 81; inv. Cod. F 263 inf. 95).  Emphasising their common origin from the same milieu, influenced by the personality of Bramante as well as Leonardo, Bora proposed that the Taubman drawing is by Pseudo Bramantino, an attribution that he has recently confirmed (E-mail of 30 August 2015).  Francesca Rossi has also independently stressed the stylistic similarities between our sheet and one of those in the Ambrosiana, representing a Standing Man, seen in profile, resting on a stick. The plasticity of the body and the sharp rendering of the light can also be compellingly compared with Pseudo Bramantino's paintings, and the figure’s head in profile, with its thick head of hair, is similar to that of the artist’s St. John the Baptist, a panel in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (M. Tanzi, op. cit., 1997, reproduced p. 70).

As a unique example of a red chalk drawing by one of the most fascinating artistic personalities active in Milan around 1500, this refined and powerful figure study is an extremely important witness to the dynamic and original artistic milieu that emerged in the city as a result of Leonardo’s residence there, and also testifies to the considerable talent as a draughtsman of its author, Pseudo Bramantino.