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Study after Michelangelo's 'Evening' (recto)

Maker

(artist)
1519-1594

Title

Study after Michelangelo's 'Evening' (recto)

Date of Production

(circa) 1555 - 1560

Medium

charcoal and white bodycolour (recto and verso) on blue laid paper (examined under microscope)

Dimensions

Height: 26.2 cm
Width: 42.2 cm

Accession Number

D.1978.PG.100

Mode of Acquisition

Count Antoine Seilern, bequest, 1978

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords





Label Text

The Venetian painter Tintoretto aspired to combine the colour of Titian with the line and form of Michelangelo. In 1557 he acquired small bronze models of Michelangelo’s Medici tombs, studying them 'intensively and making an infinite number of drawings of them by the light of an oil lamp', as Tintoretto recalled. This is one of those many studies. The figure of Evening is seen from a dramatic overhead view and the flickering light of the candle glints in the patches of white applied to his torso. The blue paper, now faded, enhances the dusky atmosphere that surrounds the marble figure.

Provenance

Sir Thomas Lawrence, London (1769-1830), L.2445 (lower left); ceded by his executors to Samuel Woodburn (London), 1835; Woodburn estate sale, Christie’s (London), 4 - 8 June 1860, lot 23; Sir Thomas Phillips (1792-1872); by descent to his grandson, Thomas Fitzroy Fenwick (1856-1938); purchased from the Fenwick estate by Count Antoine Seilern (1901-1978), 1946; Princes Gate Bequest 1978

Exhibition History

Tintoretto 500th Anniversary, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 01/09/2018-31/12/2018; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 24/03/2019-30/06/2019; Accademia, Venice, 01/09/2018-31/12/2018

Special Display - Looking at Michelangelo, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 11/02/2010-06/06/2010

Literature

Echols, Robert and Ilchman, Frederick, Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice, exh.cat. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Fondazione Musei Civici, Palazzo Ducale, Venice), New Haven and London: Yale Univeristy Press, 2018
pp. 8, 138, 172, 264
fig. 5 on p. 7
as autograph Tintoretto

Byam Shaw, James, Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, Oxford 1976
p. 205 under no. 762

Rossi, Paola, I disegni di Jacopo Tintoretto, corpus graphichum, Florence 1975
p. 43
figs. 13-14
as autograph Tintoretto ...More

Pallucchini, Rodolfo, 'Una collezione italiana a Londra' in 'Arte Veneta', 1959-60; XIII-XIV
p. 256

Seilern, Count Antoine, Italian paintings and drawings at 56 Princes Gate, London, SW7, London 1959; II
no. 100
pls. LIX, LX (recto and verso)
dated c. 1557-60, as autograph Tintoretto by comparison with Uffizi drawing

Popham, A.E., 'Sir Thomas Phillipps as a Patron of Artists and a Collector of Pictures and Drawings' in 'The Formation of the Phillipps Library from 1841-1872 (Phillipps Studies, IV), Cambridge 1956
App. B, p. 225, no. 4

Mostra di disegni di Jacopo Tintoretto e della sua scuola, Gabinetto disegni e stampe degli Uffizi, 1956
p. 12 under no. 3
had reservations about authorship

Coffin, David R., 'Tintoretto and the Medici Tombs' in 'Art Bulletin', 1951; XXXIII
p. 120n15
as doubtful by Tintoretto

Tietze, Hans and Erica Tietze-Conrat, The drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th centuries, New York, 1944
no. 1774, p. 298
as Tintoretto workshop

Popham, A.E., Catalogue of drawings in the collection formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, now in the possession of his grandson T. FitzRoy Phillipps Fenwick of Thirlestaine House Cheltenham, London 1935
p. 104, no. 1
pl. XLIX (recto) ...Less

Inscriptions

Watermark: Watermark: upper centre: unable to see clearly enough to identify.

Inscription: none.

Collector's mark: Recto: lower left, blindstamped: Sir Thomas Lawrence (L.2445).

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