AFTER THE ANTIQUE PAGE — The Practice of Drawing

AFTER THE ANTIQUE

According to Alberti’s Della Pittura, the role of the arts is to create beauty by selecting the most “excellent parts… from the most beautiful bodies”. Young artists found these in classical sculptures which provided them with models for representing volume, pose and expression. Often they would copy these sculptures from drawings by their masters of monuments such as Marcus Aurelius and the Spinario in Rome, or from small three-dimensional models and casts. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions such as Mantegna, most artists took several decades to grasp the anatomical and formal principles of the originals. It was not until the following generation, that of Michelangelo (1475–1564) and Raphael (1483–1520), that artists would fully take on the challenge of representing the Antique. By then, Pope Julius II had filled the Vatican’s Belvedere Courtyard with newly excavated works such as the Hellenistic Laocöon, and Baccio Bandinelli (1488-1560) had started an informal academy in which the study of classical sculpture was a central part of the curriculum. This would be followed, some 30 years later, by the first formal academy, the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, established by Duke Cosimo de’Medici on the initiative of the artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574).

Featured

Pisanello (Antonio Pisano), Reclining River God with Two Putti, ca. 1431-33 or 1440s, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett.

Pisanello must have seen this statue on a visit to Rome where it remained, on the Quirinal Hill near the Horse Tamers, throughout the Middle Ages. In the 15th century it was thought to represent Saturn.

The River Tigris, second century CE, marble, Rome, Capitoline Museums.

Workshop of Benozzo Gozzoli, A Nude Young Man Seated on a Block, ca. 1460, metalpoint over stylus, grey-brown wash, heightened with white, on prepared paper, London, British Museum.

Here the live model has been posed like the famous Greco-Roman sculpture of the Spinario, a practice which would become widespread in later centuries.

Andrea Mantegna, Drawing after the Relief on the Arch of Constantine, late 15th century, black chalk with brown ink, Vienna, Albertina.

Leonardo da Vinci, Profile of a Warrior in a Helmet, ca. 1472, silverpoint on paper, London, British Museum. on paper, London, British Museum.

This drawing was probably drawn by Leonardo during his seven-year apprenticeship to Verrocchio who was then the leading sculptor in Florence.

Attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio, Publius Cornelius Scipio, ca. 1475, marble, Paris, Musée Du Louvre.

Andrea Mantegna, Three Divinities, 1495-1500, pen and brown ink, brown wash, London, British Museum.

Albrecht Dürer, Standing Male Nude Holding a Bow ("Poynter Apollo"), 1501-3, pen and brown and black ink, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This drawing reflects Dürer's admiration for antique sculpture – in particular, the Apollo Belvedere, which had been recently discovered and was considered the supreme example of male beauty. Although Dürer did not travel to Rome, it was known to him through drawings and was a source of inspiration in his search for the perfect anatomy.

Enea Vico, after Baccio Bandinelli, The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, ca. 1545-50, engraving.

The celebrated sculptor Baccio Bandinelli (1493-1560) saw himself as Michelangelo’s rival, and in this work he is depicted as a man of learning, surrounded by books and antiquities and wearing a knight’s badge. One of his achievements was to secure from Pope Leo X (r. 1513-21) space in the Belvedere Courtyard at the Vatican for young artists to draw small models of Rome’s classical sculptures.

Dr Adriano Aymonino, University of Buckingham.