Echoes of the Past: Property from an Important Private Collection

Provenance:

Private collection, England

Sold: Bonhams, Knightsbridge, December 12, 1996, Lot 56 (as 'Circle of Giovanni Fiammingo')

Jean Luc Baroni, Ltd., London, 2006, cat. no. 14

Lot Essay:

Given its high degree of finish and coloring, as well as the fact that it is extensively heightened with both silver and gold, the present drawing is almost certainly a design for a tapestry, a suggestion further supported by the decorative motif drawn as a border around the composition. It was likely produced as a presentation modello, to be shown to a patron for approval before work on the actual tapestry cartoon was begun. While certain aspects of the drawing shows traces of a Northern hand, the overall effect is more in keeping with Florentine draftsmanship of the second half of the 16th century. As the patron saint of the city, Saint John the Baptist was a popular subject in Florentine art throughout the Cinquecento, and it is more than likely that the present sheet was intended not only as a modello for a tapestry commissioned by a Florentine patron but, in all probability, a tapestry woven in Florence itself.

The first tapestry workshops in Florence were established in 1545 by the Flemish weavers Nicolas Karcher and Jan Rost, both under the patronage of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, who intended to establish Florence as a major center of tapestry production in ltaly. He not only encouraged Karcher and Rost to undertake freelance commissions, but also expected them to train local apprentices. Ducal commissions resulted in more than forty narrative tapestries woven in Florence between 1546 and 1553, for the most part intended for the Palazzo Vecchio.

In 1554, Cosimo established a new ducal tapestry factory in Florence, known as the Arazzeria Medicea, which was run by local Italian weavers and used less complex materials and techniques than their Flemish predecessors. The leading designer of this period was Jan van der Straet, known as Stradanus (1523-1605), who was to produce more than one hundred tapestry cartoons for the workshop, mainly intended for the various rooms of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Medici villas. After the death of Cosimo and the accession of Ferdinando I.

The present sheet may be tentatively associated with the work of Stradanus, Comparisons may be drawn between the leopard in the right foreground of the composition, as well as the trees and foliage, with a tapestry of The Meeting of Dante and Virgil, commissioned by a member of the Salviati family of Florence and today in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Woven by Jan Rost after a design by Francesco Salviati, probably assisted by Stradanus, the tapestry may be dated to between 1547 and 1549. Also comparable to the present sheet are the animals in a tapestry of A Stag Hunt with Traps, woven by Benedetto Squilli in 1568 after a design by Stradanus, in the collection of the Amministrazione Provinciale in Siena.