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Description: | A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing from the Northern School. The drawing shows a mythical scene with identified characters. To the right is a male and female nude (identified by inscriptions as Orpheus and Euyridice). The man is holding a violin and is facing forwards, while the woman looks to the right - towards the man - and gestures with her hands. In the centre is a brick bridge, under which a dog with three heads is sleeping. On top of the bridge are several devil-like creatures with horns, and an opening into the side of a cliffed hillside in the right of the composition. There are more figures and devils scattered on this hillside. In the lower centre of the composition is the inscription '1514'.
Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society:
"No. 8
NORTH ITALIAN SCHOOL
(1514)
(A) SCYLLA: an illustration to Vergil, Aen. iv, vv. 420-428.
(B) ORPHEUS IN HADES: an illustration to Vergil, Georg. iv, vv. 457-484.
Collection of Captain E. G. Spencer Churchill, Northwick Park. From the Richardson Collection. Pen and ink. 29.8 x 21.5 cm. (11 11/16 x 8 1/2 in.).
These two very entertaining mythological drawings are from the back and front of a single sheet. Their style is unique and very puzzling. The genuine date 1514 appears at the foot of (B), and in the left-hand lower corner of (A) a later hand has repeated the same date and added a false attribution to Mantegna. Both drawings are quite certainly by the same hand, though (A) looks at first sight the abler and more vigorous of the two. The general character of the design and workmanship seems clearly North Italian; so does that of the script in which are written the name of the personages, Orpheus, Eurydice, Tisiphone, Megera, Alecto, and the rest, while marks over the u and y in the names of Pluto and 'Tytios' suggest Northern and not Italian usage, and would seem to point to a hand accustomed also to German and Flemish orthography. Can the artist be the Venetian painter and engraver Jacopo de'Barbari, in that late period of his life when he was settled in Flanders in the employ of the Regent Margaret? Certain points of type and handling are much in his manner, notably the head of Scylla, the growth of the high grasses springing at the foot of the tree opposite her, and the way of covering large spaces with long sweeping strokes as in his engravings. Such marks are much less recognizable in the Orpheus drawing, and on the whole it is safer to name him in connexion with this sheet by way of suggestion merely, not of affirmation. Somewhat analogous qualities are to be recognized in extant mythological paintings by the pseudo-Boccaccino (Giovanni Agostino da Lodi).
S. C."
Technique: REPRODUCTION
Technique: collotype (print)
Reproduction by the Vasari Society of a drawing from the Northern School, Orpheus in Hades: An illustration to Vergil, Georg. iv, 457-484 (1933.431). | Source: | Manchester City Galleries | Identifier: | mcag.emu.ecatalogue.105301 | Go to resource |
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