Agostino Carracci

Private collection;

with Thomas Williams Replica Handbags Ltd., London, by 2000,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 25 (entry by Margaret Morgan Grasselli);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 32

Agostino Carracci, along with his brother Annibale (1560-1609) and their older cousin Ludovico (1555-1619), is seen still today as symbolising a turning point in Emilian art, away from Mannerism and its intellectual heritage. This was a crucial time, when the observation of nature inspired representations of everyday life and a fresh desire to introduce a new vision in art. As Roberto Longhi (1890-1970) claimed, returning to nature is in fact a common feature of many artistic revolutions.¹ The endlessly fascinating simplicity and complexity of nature was explored by the Carracci through numerous drawings, many of which are still extant. These drawings enabled them to capture on paper the immediacy of a moment, and a timeless image.

As Margaret Morgan Grasselli pointed out (see Exhibited), on the recto of the present sheet Agostino focused on ‘a tangle of tree limbs and trunks that cre­ate a pleasing pattern of rectilinear and rounded forms.' Very likely an exercise done from nature, this is a challenging representation in which the artist focuses on the diversity of the ways in which the branches spring from the central trunk; only the large branch in the foreground seems to originate from outside his closely focussed field of view. The luminous and lush foliage is studied in clumps and as Morgan Grasselli observed, the suggestion of light falling over the tree trunk and the ‘indication of irregu­larities in the tree's surface through subtle variations in the shape, length, and strength of his pen strokes’ are particularly sensitively handled. Agostino has strengthened his penwork when indicating the trunks and branches, built with parallel strokes and crosshatchings, while flooding the foliage with light, especially on the upper section of the main tree, seen center-left in the composition. A lyrical touch is provided by the indication of a flight of birds to the far left. On the verso, Agostino observed a distant landscape, framed to the left by a large tree trunk and its branches.

Although the present sheet can be compared with similarly handled trees in Agostino's landscape compositions, as mentioned by Morgan Grasselli,² the subtle description of nature in the present double-sided sheet demonstrates an attention to detail and truthfulness to physical reality that suggests these studies were most probably executed from life.

Perhaps even more than is the case for Annibale (see lot 29), Agostino’s style demonstrates a fascination with the world of Venetian art, and its assimilation can be appreciated in this double-sided drawing, where the lingering influence of sixteenth-century Venetian landscape drawings is readily detectable. With careful attention to detail, space and form are defined by Agostino solely in pen and ink, without the mediation of wash. Moreover, on the verso the fortified building at the top of a hill, in a mountainous landscape, could even record a real view in the Veneto.

In 1582 Agostino went to Venice for the first time, where he made prints derived from paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese, whose works were very influential in his development. He later travelled to Milan and Cremona, returning to Bologna between 1583 and 1584, where he joined Lodovico and Annibale in working on the frescoed decoration of Palazzo Fava. During a further ten years of travelling, Agostino spent time in Venice (twice), Parma, Rome, Cremona and Florence.

^1.Roberto Longhi, Momenti della pittura bolognese, Bologna 1935, pp. 126-127

^2.Morgan Grasselli rightly pointed out close parallel with many other drawings attributed to Agostino, including two landscape compositions for the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, one in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1946,0713.717), and the other in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire and the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees, Chatsworth (inv. no. 816 A)