Domenico Beccafumi

With Daniela Laube Replica Handbags , New York,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

P. Parshall and D. Landau, The Renaissance Print 1470-1550, New Haven 1994 (another impression cited);

A. Gnann, In Farbe! Clair-obscur-Holzschnitte der Renaissance. Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Georg Baselitz und der Albertina in Wien, exhib. cat., Albertina, Vienna, 2013, nos. 113 & 114 (another impression cited);

A. Gnann, Chiaroscuro Renaissance woodcuts from the collections of Georg Baselitz and the Albertina, Vienna, exhib. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2014, no. 80 (another impression cited);

The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2018-19, nos. 70 (state 1a) and 71 (state 1b), pp. 176-178 (another impression cited)

Domenico Beccafumi, born in a small hamlet outside Siena, was a highly versatile artist, active as a painter, sculptor, and engraver as well as block cutter. He was deeply inspired by the art of Michelangelo and Raphael during his visit to Rome from 1510 to 1512, as well as by the Florentine Fra Bartolomeo. He was active in Siena for the greatest part of his life, where he became one of the most distinctive creators of Tuscan Mannerism.

Italian chiaroscuro woodcut prints are amongst the most technically innovative of Renaissance prints, for being printed in color. The technique, pioneered in Germany in the early 1500s, was introduced in Italy in the second decade of the 16^th century by Ugo da Carpi (c. 1470-1532). In his hands, and those of his immediate successors – Domenico Beccafumi, Antonio da Trento (fl. 1527-1540s) and Niccolò Vicentino (1510-1566) - the capacity of the medium to replicate the painterly effects of a wash drawing reached an extraordinary degree of sophistication.

Beccafumi, however, is unique amongst these artists, who created chiaroscuro woodcuts after drawings by other artists, such as Raphael. Beccafumi not only invented his own compositions, but treated every impression of his prints as a work of art in its own right and cut his blocks in a highly individual manner: ‘The traces of Beccafumi's cutting tools - the scratchy knife work, the broad bite of the chisel - assert the texture of the wood and the vigor of the artist's carving."¹

Although the present chiaroscuro woodcut is small in scale, it is monumental - prefiguring William Blake’s small scale, heroic biblical patriarchs in Jerusalem of the early 19^th century. The figure of the Apostle fuses the artist’s florid Mannerism with Sienese tradition; the extravagant, Gothic S curve of the contrapposto stance is emphasized by the sway of his upper garment and balletic sweep of his arms, while the muscularity of the bent leg, brought out by clinging robes which fall in columnar folds, and the tufted beard with prominent, flowing moustaches, are all highly characteristic features of the artist’s style.

The woodcut is built up from the light tone block with the darker blocks combined to outline forms and dense shadows, creating sculptural depth and a rich, painterly effect, in an analogous manner to the artist’s wash drawings – see, for example, the pen and ink drawing of an Apostle in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (fig. 1).

Like Rembrandt, Beccafumi did not ink and print his works in a consistent manner, which explains the free and painterly effects. Thin and narrow incisions produced by his unusual technique of wood cutting resulted in ink clogging, which has likely created the splattered effect, for example, around the contour of the head of the shadow.

The color combination of the present woodcut, printed in orange and reddish-brown, is extremely rare. It is one of a number of early impressions printed in an orange palette, of which examples can be found at the Albertina, Vienna (DG2002/389); the British Museum (W,5.13); the Museum of Replica Handbags s, Boston (1975.481); and Berlin (135-1927). Subsequently the light tone block of state 1b, illustrated as cat. no. 71 in Takahatake, endured wear and tear, notably a circular break at upper right. Impressions of state 1b were printed in grey (Takahatake records five examples in museums). Takahatake records three further impressions of state Ia, two printed in blue (BM1904,0226.19, illustrated as cat. no. 70, as well as an impression in the Uffizi, GDSU 75 st. sc.); and a further impression hand-printed in dark grey in the British Museum (1868,0612.19).

The dividers held by the Apostle, as well as the sphere at his feet, transforming the subject into God the divine architect, have been added by a later hand in pen and ink and wash.

^1.P. Parshall, The Baroque woodcut, exhib. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery, 2006