JACOPO DA PONTE, DIT JACOPO BASSANO | Study of the Virgin and child

Provenant de l'album Sagredo (avec numérotation à la plume et encre brune, au verso : B. B. n° : 94, et sur le montage en bas à droite : B.B. n° : 32), dont voici la provenance :
Doge Nicolò Sagredo, vers 1654 ;
Son frère, Stefano Sagredo, Venise ;
Son neveu, Zaccaria Sagredo (1632-1729), Venise ;
Sa femme, Cecilia Sagredo, jusqu'à sa vente, vers 1743 ;
Probablement collection John Udny (1727-1800) ; 
Jean- Pierre Cornet, Paris, (L. 3507), vers 1970 (selon une inscription manuscrite de la documentation du département des Peintures, musée du Louvre) ; 
Vente anonyme, Londres, Sotheby's, 10 décembre 1975, n°7 ; 
Vente anonyme, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 20 octobre 1980, M^e Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr, n°2 ; 
Acquis à cette vente.

Rennes, 2012, n°6 (notice par Ketty Gotardo)

Laid down and attached with six tabs of paper to the original album page from the Sagredo album. Three ridges running across the sheet, defects from the manufacturing of the paper. Two small light brown stains, near and one on the upper right corner. There are about three tiny losses on the second ridge. The surface of the paper shows some rubbing and some surface dirt. Sold unframed.
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Vigorous and monumental, this drawing is highly characteristic of Jacopo Bassano’s timeless graphic style.  It shows the originality of his draughtsmanship, as well as the debt to Titian’s painterly and progressive use of black chalk.  When it first appeared at auction in 1975, it was already recognized as a preparatory study for Bassano’s late painting, Podestà Sante Moro presented to the Virgin by St. Roch (fig. 1), commissioned in 1576 by Sante Moro, who had survived the plague of 1575, for the Chapel of the Palazzo del Pretorio, Bassano.¹  The painting is now preserved in the city of Bassano’s Museo Civico.    The drawing is a quick and robust preliminary study for the figures of the Virgin and Child.  It is executed mostly with broad and reassured strokes of black chalk, combined with a few painterly touches of red chalk, in a manner very characteristic of Jacopo’s style.  The red chalk is used to highlight the Madonna’s face, and is also applied to define the contours of the figure of the blessing Christ Child, and in a few places to accentuate the pleats of the Madonna’s gown.  Luminous touches of white heightening are still visible on the rough surface of the buff paper.  

As Ketty Gottardo noted in her entry for this drawing in the Rennes exhibition catalogue, two further drawings by Bassano for this Madonna and Child are known, both executed solely in red chalk, a medium not often used by the artist.  The first appeared on the art market in 1962 and again in 1986, and was believed by Roger Rearick to be an autograph drawing by Jacopo Bassano.²  The second, sold in 1992,³ is considered by Rearick to be a work by Jacopo’s son, Leandro Bassano, whom he believed to have collaborated with his father in the execution of this painting.  Gottardo has rightly stressed that both these drawings are very close to the handling of the painting, and show no differences in the areas of light and shadows, demonstrating a lack of the spontaneity of execution that characterises Jacopo Bassano’s works on paper.  

Both these other drawings share, with the present sheet, the same historic provenance, all three having been in the possession of the Sagredo family during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see Provenance).  The Sagredos owned an entire volume of drawings, containing some two hundred sheets by the Bassano Family and their workshop, which was subsequently purchased by John Udny in 1762.  The Sagredo inscriptions on the reverse of all these drawings consist of the letters B.B., signifying ‘Bottega Bassanesca’, followed by individual inventory numbers for each drawing. 

^1.  The painting is mentioned by C. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte, overo le Vite degl’illustri pittori veneti e dello Stato, Venice 1648, vol. I, p. 397

^2.  See V. Romani in Jacopo Bassano, exhib. cat., Bassano del Grappa, Museo Civico, and Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 1992-93, p. 274, no. 112; sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 16 January 1986, lot 1563

^3.  Sale, London, Sotheby’s, 13 April 1992, lot 158 (as Studio of Jacopo Bassano)