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JACOPO ZANGUIDI Also known as JACOPO BERTOIA (1544-1574) Study of two nude figures and three grotesque heads (c. 1570 Italy)

Pen and brown ink, brown wash.

Inscribed 'Parmigianino'.

130.00mm high 200.00mm wide (5.12 inches high  7.87 inches wide)

Sir Joshua Reynolds (L. 2364); A.M. Champernowne (L. 153); B. Read.

R.E.A. Wilson, London, Catalogue of Drawings by Old and Modern Artists from the Stock of R.E.A. Wilson, 1931, p.47, no. 101, as ‘Parmigianino’, illustrated p.36.

R.E.A. Wilson, London, Catalogue of Drawings by Old and Modern Artists from the Stock of R.E.A. Wilson, 1931, p.47, no. 101, as ‘Parmigianino’, illustrated p.36.

Very good.

Even though little is known of Bertoia’s artistic education, he is indeed better acknowledged today for his drawings than for his paintings. His works show that one of the foremost influences in his development was that of Parmigianino (1503-1540) who had died four years before he was born . Like Parmigianino he seems to have been a prolific draughtsman, working out ideas constantly on paper, often rethinking and changing compositions. In the early 1570’s, Cardinal Farnese dismissed Federico Zuccaro at Caprarola (Rome) and replaced him by Bertoia who was already in the city decorating the Oratorio del Gonfalone. It is while working there that the artist adopted the then ‘modern-day Roman manner’ that is to say sculptural, monumental and classicizing, by the same token stamping his inherent pictorial language of a decorator: planar, scenic and light-hearted. Apart from the stimuli of Parmigianino and Corregio’s art in Parma, in Rome the artist was exposed to the works of Raphael, Perino del Vaga and Zuccaro as well as Roman classical art. However, at the same time Bertoia’s approach may have appeared out-dated in the face of the ‘naturalistic’ manner of the Carracci in Bologna.

The present sheet is closely related in style and technique to a sheet of studies in Paris specifically the left hand figure in our drawing where it is used by the draughtsman and placed in an alcove . Indeed it could be an early thought to be used for frescoes in the Sala del Bacio in Palazzo del Giardino in Parma or in the Oratorio del Gonfalone set in Rome in 1567-1568. Another sheet for the decorative scheme of the frieze of the Oratorio del Gonfalone in the British Museum also shows the same figure , its torso strongly emulating an antique Roman Venus sculpture of the 4th century AD . The floating figure in the central space of the drawing recalls a similar figure on the upper left of a sheet also in the British Museum , Studies of a composition of Jacob’s Dream. Likewise, the same figure also recurs in a sheet of studies in the Louvre . One of the grotesque heads in the centre of the sheet can be linked to a grotesque head on the lower right hand corner of Study for a Ceiling Decoration (c1568-1572) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London . Technique and poses for the left nude recur as for instance in a sheet in Milan, Stanza del Borgo , where Bertoia uses the same morphology and style as in the present drawing. Although the draughtsman has added brown wash to our sheet, similar are the fluidity of exterior lines, the repeated pentimenti to define form and the parallel hatching to sharply separate light from shade.

From his earliest years, his graphic interest lay in the human figure as a decorative object to be manipulated for ornamental purposes. Whilst the artist’s early nudes show simple single contours lines supported by a light wash, his later drawings are indeed very distinctive from Parmigianino’s by their distinct morphology with heavier and more muscular figures, a thicker pen line and an increased dependence on wash.

The artist graphic work can be found in the Prints and Drawings Department, British Museum, London; in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; in the Musee du Louvre, Paris; in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; in Gabinetto Designi & Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence; in the Hermitage, St Petersburg; in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

Once attributed to Parmigianino, this drawing was recognised as Bertoia’s work by Hugo Chapman on the basis of style, technique and composition.