Honors Rendered at Psyche
| Reference: | S39486 |
| Author | Niccolò ROSSIGLIANI detto "Il Vicentino" |
| Year: | 1540 ca. |
| Measures: | 260 x 270 mm |
€3,500.00
| Reference: | S39486 |
| Author | Niccolò ROSSIGLIANI detto "Il Vicentino" |
| Year: | 1540 ca. |
| Measures: | 260 x 270 mm |
€3,500.00
Description
Chiaroscuro woodcut from three blocks, circa 1540.
Example in the second state of two, inscribed with publisher's address and date lower left 'AA in mantoua. 1602'.
A very good impression, printed with tone on contemporary blue paper, small restoration perfectly carried out in the lower and upper left corners, very light abrasions visible on verso, otherwise in excellent condition.
The composition derives from Francesco Salviati's ceiling decoration of 1539 in the Palazzo Grimani near Santa Maria Formosa, Venice.
Bartsch and many later writers attributed the print to Antonio da Trento, but Passavant, following Mariette's opinion, correctly assigned it to Niccolò Rossigliani called Vicentino. Also S. Boorsch attributes this work to Vicentino; Naoko Takahatake ('The chiaroscuro woodcut in Renaissance Italy', Los Angeles 2018, cats. 62-63), agrees with the attribution to Vicentino: “Shortly after his arrival in Venice in the summer of 1539, Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) was at work on Honors Rendered to Psyche, an octagonal painting commissioned to adorn a ceiling in Giovanni Grimani's palazzo at Santa Maria Formosa. The palazzo housed an important collection of antiquities and was decorated with ancient themes, including the present subject from Apuleius's Metamorphoses depicting the beautiful princess Psyche admired by her citizens. Salviati's first major work in the city, the painting-thought to have been lost in the nineteenth century, until its recent rediscovery-received the superlative praise of his close friend and fellow Tuscan Giorgio Vasari, who described it as “the most beautiful work of painting that there is in all Venice”. The print departs from the painting in a number of details: Psyche's stance and the position of her right hand are modified; the figure behind her is less tightly cropped and holds a stick absent in the painting; and the print's elaborate urban prospect replaces the isolated tempietto (small, round temple structure) and suggestions of ancient ruins.
The differences between the print and finished painting may indicate that the blockcutter worked from a preliminary drawing of some kind. As Andrea De Marchi's study of the painting has revealed, Salviati made changes to the design in the course of its execution. Although Salviati did not develop a lasting partnership with any single printmaker, he demonstrated an interest in having his designs disseminated in the form of prints throughout his career. Vasari records how Salviati had left drawings in Bologna to be engraved by Girolamo Fagiuoli, just prior to his arrival in Venice. While many prints after Salviati are both unsigned and undated, a number of them can be dated to the 1540s, including Honors Rendered to Psyche.
Pierre Jean Mariette correctly identified the unsigned print as the work of Niccolò Vicentino after Salviati. Some later writers, including Bartsch, have attributed the cutting to Antonio da Trento. However, in its partitioning of the design over three blocks, Honors Rendered to Pryche strongly resembles Vicentino's signed Christ Healing the Lepers. In both prints, the mid-block schematically renders architecture in the background, while the dark block reinforces outlines and shadows in the foreground to convey atmospheric perspective. The character of the cutting is also similar, with flowing contours and long, slightly wavering parallel lines of deep shading. Moreover, the delineation of highlights on the ground plane finds a close parallel in the signed Death of Ajax (B.XII.99.9)” (cf. N. Takahatake, 'The chiaroscuro woodcut in Renaissance Italy', p. 161).
Bibliografia
Bartsch XII.125.26 (Antonio da Trento); Le Blanc II. 218.8 ; Passavant VI.222.26; Davis, Mannerist Prints, no. 53 (Niccolò Vicentino); Matile 2003, n. 70 (Niccolò Vicentino); Gnann 2013, nn. 102-103 (Niccolò Vicentino); Naoko Takahatake, The chiaroscuro woodcut in Renaissance Italy, 2018, cat. 62-63.
Niccolò ROSSIGLIANI detto "Il Vicentino" (Attivo a Vicenza 1540-50)
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Italian woodcutter and printer. He signed five chiaroscuro woodcuts, each after a different artist and all undated. Probably the earliest is a two-block woodcut of Hercules and the Lion after Giulio Romano. Cloelia after Maturino or Giulio Romano, in three blocks, is still rather crudely cut and registered, and probably the next chronologically. A very cursive, elegant line manifests itself in subsequent works, such as Ajax and Agamemnon after Polidoro da Caravaggio, the Sacra Conversazione with St Catherine after a design attributed to Camillo Boccaccino and Christ Healing the Lepers after Parmigianino. An unsigned Adoration of the Magi and The Cardinal and the Doctor can also reasonably be ascribed to him. His hand is doubtless one of several discernible in a large group of anonymous chiaroscuros based on designs by Parmigianino that may represent the products of a workshop supervised by Vicentino. Vasari related how Parmigianino had certain chiaroscuros cut by Antonio da Trento, and that many other designs were printed after the painter’s death by ‘Joannicolo Vicentino’. A group of ten small anonymous two-block chiaroscuros after silverpoint drawings by Parmigianino as well as the Twelve Apostles in which two cutting hands are visible, are presumably part of this output, along with about a dozen more anonymous chiaroscuros. That Vicentino had a workshop is further suggested by the fact that a large number of the Parmigianino drawings related to the chiaroscuros remained together and that Andrea Andreani seems to have acquired many of the blocks and reprinted them later in the 16th century.
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Niccolò ROSSIGLIANI detto "Il Vicentino" (Attivo a Vicenza 1540-50)
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Italian woodcutter and printer. He signed five chiaroscuro woodcuts, each after a different artist and all undated. Probably the earliest is a two-block woodcut of Hercules and the Lion after Giulio Romano. Cloelia after Maturino or Giulio Romano, in three blocks, is still rather crudely cut and registered, and probably the next chronologically. A very cursive, elegant line manifests itself in subsequent works, such as Ajax and Agamemnon after Polidoro da Caravaggio, the Sacra Conversazione with St Catherine after a design attributed to Camillo Boccaccino and Christ Healing the Lepers after Parmigianino. An unsigned Adoration of the Magi and The Cardinal and the Doctor can also reasonably be ascribed to him. His hand is doubtless one of several discernible in a large group of anonymous chiaroscuros based on designs by Parmigianino that may represent the products of a workshop supervised by Vicentino. Vasari related how Parmigianino had certain chiaroscuros cut by Antonio da Trento, and that many other designs were printed after the painter’s death by ‘Joannicolo Vicentino’. A group of ten small anonymous two-block chiaroscuros after silverpoint drawings by Parmigianino as well as the Twelve Apostles in which two cutting hands are visible, are presumably part of this output, along with about a dozen more anonymous chiaroscuros. That Vicentino had a workshop is further suggested by the fact that a large number of the Parmigianino drawings related to the chiaroscuros remained together and that Andrea Andreani seems to have acquired many of the blocks and reprinted them later in the 16th century.
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