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Lot Essay
The two drawings were probably pages from a small sketchbook of which other sheets are also known (some were offered for sale in 2021 with these). The two compositions reproduce respectively the images of Pluto and Apollo featured in a series of twenty prints, Gods in Niches, made by Jacopo Caraglio after drawings by Rosso Fiorentino in 1526 (figs. 1 and 2; E. A. Carroll, Rosso Fiorentino. Drawings, prints, and decorative arts, exhib. cat., Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, 1987, nos. 27 and 31).
While most of Rosso’s preparatory drawings for the series are untraceable, a few survive and among them is the sheet for Pluto in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Lyons (inv. 447/a; ibid., no. 19, ill.). Rosso and Caraglio worked closely together on the series and the printmaker reversed the image on the plate so that in the final print it appears in the same direction as the original drawing.
The present drawings, made after Caraglio’s prints, reveal, in their free and lively graphic style, the hand of Francesco Poppi. Even in their sketchy rendering, the figures present some features, such as the pointy noses and exuberant hair, characteristic of Poppi’s style.
Having trained with Giorgio Vasari and Giovanni Battista Naldini, Francesco Morandini, known as Il Poppi (from his birthplace in Tuscany) was a key figure of the Florentine Maniera. A prolific draftsman, many of his known drawings document the practice, fundamental in the teachings of the academy in Florence, of copying in drawings the works of the great Renaissance masters. These two small compositions after Rosso Fiorentino can be added to the numerous study sheets made by Poppi after Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, Federico Barocci, Giambologna and others (A. Giovannetti, Francesco Morandini detto il Poppi, Florence, 1995, pp. 209-222).
Fig. 1. Jacopo Caraglio, Pluto. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 2. Jacopo Caraglio, Apollo. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
While most of Rosso’s preparatory drawings for the series are untraceable, a few survive and among them is the sheet for Pluto in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Lyons (inv. 447/a; ibid., no. 19, ill.). Rosso and Caraglio worked closely together on the series and the printmaker reversed the image on the plate so that in the final print it appears in the same direction as the original drawing.
The present drawings, made after Caraglio’s prints, reveal, in their free and lively graphic style, the hand of Francesco Poppi. Even in their sketchy rendering, the figures present some features, such as the pointy noses and exuberant hair, characteristic of Poppi’s style.
Having trained with Giorgio Vasari and Giovanni Battista Naldini, Francesco Morandini, known as Il Poppi (from his birthplace in Tuscany) was a key figure of the Florentine Maniera. A prolific draftsman, many of his known drawings document the practice, fundamental in the teachings of the academy in Florence, of copying in drawings the works of the great Renaissance masters. These two small compositions after Rosso Fiorentino can be added to the numerous study sheets made by Poppi after Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, Federico Barocci, Giambologna and others (A. Giovannetti, Francesco Morandini detto il Poppi, Florence, 1995, pp. 209-222).
Fig. 1. Jacopo Caraglio, Pluto. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 2. Jacopo Caraglio, Apollo. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.