Newsletter Archive: Spring 1998
by Tim Llewellyn
Chairman of
the Friends of the Courtauld Institute
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| Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, The Head of a Boy and an Old Man c.1730s. Chalk on Paper | Jacopo Pontormo, Seated Youth c.1525. Chalk on Paper |
The strength of the painting collection at the Courtauld Galleries is such
that sometimes the extraordinary quality of the drawings which generous
collectors have left to the Institute is overlooked. The two drawings I
have chosen to discuss are wonderfully revealing examples of the work of
two artists whom I admire very much and for whom drawing was enormously
important. Moreover, they have significant points in common: they are in
the same medium and of similar rather large size; they both depict young
men and they were both drawn from life. Seated Youth drawn by Jacopo
Pontormo (1494 - 1557) around 1525 in black chalk on buff coloured paper
and measuring 40.4 by 28 cm., is part of the Princes Gate Collection, the
gift of Count Antoine Seilern given in 1978.
The Head of a Boy and an Old Man, a work of Giovanni Battista
Piazzetta (1682 - 1754) probably dating from the 1730s, is also drawn
in black chalk but this time with white heightening and on pale grey
paper. It measures 34.1 by 27.35 cm. and came to the Institute in 1952
with the collection left by Sir Robert Witt.
To the best of our knowledge Pontormo's drawing was not intended or used
as a preparatory study for a fresco or easel painting. Indeed, its extraordinary
immediacy suggests that it was a spontaneous reaction to the appearance
of a rather bored 'garzone’ one day in the artist's studio, a
drawing made for its own sake, an exercise in observation and skill of
the hand. It is true that the main contours of the figure have been indented
with a stylus, but this may well have been done later, perhaps by a pupil
making a copy. Pontormo, who wrote that for him drawing excelled all
other art forms in importance, carefully retained his drawings in his
studio where they would have been available to his pupils.
They remained there until his death. Piazzetta was reputed to have made
drawings every day, including many preparatory studies, but we know that
some were for a different purpose. The existence of similar sheets suggests
that the Courtauld drawing was intended as a work of art in its own right,
to be sold to one of a group of enthusiastic international collectors.
It is probable that these large drawings of heads by Piazzetta which
he seems to have made throughout his career, the so-called Teste di Carattere,
were intended to be seen framed on the wall, not in an album or portfolio.
If so, they were the first series of drawings ever produced specifically
for this purpose.
The works themselves present a powerful contrast exemplified by the sitters.
Piazzetta's young man, although we only see him in profile, conveys an
impression of intense concentration as he follows the finger of his mentor
across the page. The composition and the tonal contrasts of the dark
chalk against the pale paper combine to suggest that the boy is entirely
without distraction from his task. We might say that the drawing is all
about "focus".
How different is Pontormo's youth! There is an extraordinary idiosyncrasy
in the artist's manner of drawing and painting faces and particularly eyes
which mark him out from the many great talents which surrounded him as draughtsman
and painter. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that these rather
unsettling features suggest aspects of the character of the artist himself,
shy, introverted, perhaps even neurotic. This boy’s eyes are like
infinite oceans and their vacuous gaze allied with the simple, relaxed
pose create a haunting image of distraction. Perhaps Pontormo's sublime
skill was able to capture in the image of this boy, as in a mirror, some
of the uncertainties of his own existence. That same skill enables us
to do the same.