EDITION 03 | DECEMBER 2025
@troiscrayons | troiscrayons.art | info@troiscrayons.art
“Blue chip art sells for high prices”. In a month when headlines focused on the $2.2 billion spent on modern art at auction in New York, the world of pre-modern drawings produced its own share of remarkable discoveries. A rare cartoon by Daniele da Volterra fetched €4.1 million (with fees) at Millon in Paris, while Christie’s revealed a newly-discovered Michelangelo drawing and Sotheby’s announced the forthcoming auction of a Rembrandt. These two drawings, and the much-lauded collection of Diane A. Nixon, will come to their respective blocks in New York in early February.
In some personal news, we were honoured to see the Trois Crayons Museum Forum shortlisted for Apollo magazine’s Digital Innovation of the Year award. The recognition of the project as one of the year’s top digital endeavours in the art and museum space was an endorsement of its aims to provide a home for the discussion and identification of ‘problem’ drawings in public collections. The forum was in fine company alongside the Prado’s Aracne, the RKD’s Marks on Art, the Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s Romare Bearden Catalogue Raisonné Project, the UNESCO Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects, and the Getty Provenance Index – which ultimately took the prize home.
This month’s magazine features a submission to the Trois Crayons Museum Forum from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, news headlines and announcements, gallery listings, lectures, events and an overview of recent institutional acquisitions. Annemarie Stefes, curator of Expedition Drawing. Masters from the Low Countries in Close-Up, shares a fascinating new piece of research for the Drawing of the Month. Exhibition listings are followed by a new recurring feature on historical collectors, wherein Daniel Lowe examines the fabled drawings collection of Giorgio Vasari. Jasmine Clark reviews Michelangelo and Men at the Teylers Museum, and lastly, after the Real or Fake quiz, a trio of audio, video and literary recommendations.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
Tom Nevile
Editor
TROIS CRAYONS MUSEUM FORUM
Museum Partner Spotlight: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
This month’s selection from the Trois Crayons Museum Forum is a drawing from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Wedding or carnival procession (design for a ceremonial plate?). For a second consecutive month: an unknown subject by an unknown artist.
Comments: With former attributions to the French goldsmith Étienne Delaune and the Flemish artist Frederick van Valckenborch on the museum’s database, more recent suggestions on the forum have put forward the names Lambert van Noort and Christoph Jamnitzer.
Perhaps even more enigmatic than the attribution of the drawing is its subject matter. The drawing appears to be a design for a ceremonial plate, and depicts either a wedding or carnival procession.
To participate in this discussion and others, please see here. To register as a museum partner, please email info@troiscrayonsforum.org.
Image Credit: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
NEWS
IN GALLERY, ART FAIR AND AUCTION NEWS
- The major auction houses host their December Old Master sales in London at the start of the month. At Christie’s, Classic Week runs from 2–11 December, with a selection of drawings in the day sale. The Michelangelo drawing will be on view until tomorrow, 2 December. At Sotheby’s, Old Masters runs from 2–5 December, with highlights from February’s sale, Master Drawings from the Collection of Diane A. Nixon, on view until 3 December. At Bonhams, The Classics runs until 4 December.
- Until 2 December – Nordic Visions presented by Cadogan Fine Arts at J/M Gallery (London).
- Until 5 December – Édouard Moyse (1827-1908) at Nicolas Schwed (Paris).
- 4–7 December – Open Gallery Weekend at Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge (London).
- Until 17 December – One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours at Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, Moore-Gwyn Fine Art and Freya Mitton (London).
- Until 18 December – Winter Exhibition 2025 at Stephen Ongpin Fine Art (London).
- Until 18 December – Charles Doudelet (1861-1938): A Flemish Primitive around 1900 at Thomas Deprez Fine Arts (Brussels).
- Until 20 December – La Bellezza del Ritratto at Maurizio Nobile (Bologna).
- Until 23 December – Impressionist Works on Paper at Stern Pissarro Gallery (London).
- Until 3 January – The Illustrators 2025, The British Art of Illustration 1806-2025 at Chris Beetles Gallery (London).
- Until 10 January – Old Vessels, New Spirits at Massimo De Carlo (Milan). Organised in collaboration with Wildenstein & Co.
- Until 17 January – Paula Rego. Drawing from Life at Cristea Roberts Gallery (London).
- Until 31 January – Robert Crumb: Boswell’s London and Other Diaries at CASSIUS&Co. (London).
Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862 - 1944), A Sunlit Grove of Birch and Pine Trees, about 1903, watercolor and gouache, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Disegno Group, 2025.72
Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862 - 1944), A Sunlit Grove of Birch and Pine Trees, about 1903, watercolor and gouache, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Disegno Group, 2025.72
IN LECTURE AND EVENT NEWS
- 3 December – Talk: Rencontre autour de Delacroix Dessinateur at MusBA Bordeaux (Bordeaux). Speakers: Sophie Barthélémy, Sylvaine Lestable. 6:30pm. Free entry.
- 4–5 December – Conference: Turner 250 at Tate Britain (London). 9:30am. £5.
- 5 December – Event: Drawing the Italian Renaissance: Curator’s Introduction at The King's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse (Edinburgh). Speaker: Lauren Porter. 1pm. £6.
- 5 December – Lecture: Good Humor: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine at Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach). Speaker: Nadine Orenstein. 6pm. Price: Museum Admission/Members Free.
- 12 December – Book presentation: Mauritshuis in lijn. Johan Steengracht van Oostcapelle en Nederlands eerste geïllustreerde museumcatalogus at RKD (The Hague). Speakers: Yvonne Bleyerveld, Quentin Buvelot, Ingrid Vermeulen. 3:15pm. Registration required via events@rkd.nl.
- 13 December – Symposium: 9th Forum Bella Maniera at Institut national d'Histoire de l'Art, Salle Vasari (Paris). Speakers: Sophie Harent, Xavier Salmon, Anders Svensson, Maria Giovanna Donà, Damien Tellas. 2:30–6:30pm. Free entry.
IN LITERARY, MUSEUM AND ACADEMIC NEWS
- New publication – An Artist’s Choice. Italian Drawings from the Collection of Martin von Wagner. Edited by Eckhard Leuschner, Damian Dombrowski, Luca Baroni and Carolin Goll. Published by Harrassowitz. €98.
- New publication – Expedition Zeichnung. Niederländische Meister unter der Lupe. Annemarie Stefes et al. Published by Wallraf Graphische Sammlung. €25.
- New publication – Lines of Friendship: Art Historical Essays Commemorating Robert-Jan te Rijdt (1955-2024). Edited by Charles Dumas, Charles Kang, Marleen Ram and Gajus Scheltema. Published by Primavera Pers. €69.50.
- New publication – Mauritshuis in lijn. Quentin Buvelot, Charlotte Dalmijn, Ingrid Vermeulen. Published by Waanders Publishers in collaboration with RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History. €29.95.
- New publication – The Stradanus Project – Catalogue of Drawings. Julia Siemon. Edited by Caitlin Condell, Jamie Kwan. Published by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Free access.
- New publication – Dessins des Carraches: Le fabrique de la Galerie Farnèse. Victor Hundsbuckler. Published by Louvre éditions and Lienart éditions. €45.
- New publication – Master Drawings, Winter Issue (Volume 63, Number 4). A celebration of the Ricciardi Prize. Subscription by annual volume.
- Call for papers – Monographic focus on Raphael, his school, and legacy. L’IDEA, Volume III, 2026 | Issue 2. Drawings. In anticipation of the 500th anniversary of the Sack of Rome (1527–2027), this monographic issue will be devoted to Raphael, his school and followers, and to his artistic legacy within and beyond the Cinquecento. Deadline for the abstracts: 15 December. Deadline for the articles: 15 March 2026.
- Fellowship opportunity – Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The applicant must have a doctoral degree in hand by the start of the fellowship in February 2026. Application deadline: 1 December.
- Job opportunity –Assistant / Associate Curator Of Prints And Drawings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco. Priority will be given to applications received by 7 December.
- Job opportunity – Senior Museum Technician for Works on Paper at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco. Application deadline: 5 December.
- Fellowship opportunity – Conrad Whelan 42 Fellowship at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Applications welcome from PhD and postdoctoral candidates working on the art and cultural history of the Low Countries whose principal concern is object-based research. Application deadline: 4 January.
- Announcement – The 2025 Berger Prize, the leading book prize for British art history, has been awarded to Eleonora Pistis for her book Architecture of Knowledge: Hawksmoor and Oxford (Brepols, 2024). The prize is delivered by the Walpole Society through the generosity of the Berger Collection Educational Trust.
IN ACQUISITION NEWS
- The British Museum has revealed several new acquisitions and gifts, including:
- 16 drawings from the Bequest of Colin Clark, mostly by Pierre-Alexandre Wille (1748–1837).
- 8 drawings from the Bequest of Professor Richard Verdi, OBE, including works by George Romney (1734–1802), Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) and Thomas Couture (1815–1879).
- Francis Towne (1739–1816), Villa Mellini, Rome. Acquired from Lowell Libson, London. Funded by the Ottley Group.
- Mary Headlam (1874–1959), Interior view of a cottage, and Portrait of Kate Syrett. Acquired from Abbott & Holder, London. Purchased with contributions from the Dr Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation and the Friends of Prints and Drawings.
The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, has announced two recent acquisitions:
- Louis Anquetin (1861–1932), Avenue de Clichy, Five O'Clock in the Evening, purchased with support from the VriendenLoterij.
- William Degouve de Nuncques (1867–1935), Lake Como, purchased with support from the VriendenLoterij.
Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, has strengthened its collection of 19th century Dutch drawings with the support of the Coen Schimmelpenninck van der Oije Fund. Recent additions include:
- Alexander Ver Huell (1822–1897), A young man with a sword (St. George?) is attacked by monsters. Acquired from Den Otter Fine Art, Rotterdam.
- Gerrit Zegelaar (1719–1794), Man with letter. Acquired from Den Otter Fine Art, Rotterdam.
- Aert Schouman (1710–1792), Landscape study with three large trees. Acquired from Den Otter Fine Art, Rotterdam.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has revealed several new acquisitions and gifts, including:
- Hubert Robert (1733–1808), Self-Portrait in Saint-Lazare Prison. Charles and Jessie Price Gift, 2025.
- David Vinckboons (1576–1629), Allegorical scene with beggars and blacksmiths (recto); Sketch of rooftop (verso). Acquired from Onno van Seggelen Fine Art, Rotterdam. Frits and Rita Markus Fund, 2025.
- Etienne Carjat (1802–1870), Portrait of Alexandre Dumas. Acquired from Agnews, Brussels. Purchase, PECO Foundation Gift, 2025.
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Peasant Woman Kneeling and Pulling Carrots, Gift of the Constance B. and Carroll L. Cartwright Collection in memory of George F. Bauerdorf.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has announced the completion of a multiyear Gifts of Art campaign that has strengthened every curatorial area of the permanent collection. Gifts of Art garnered more than 2,000 gifts from 275 donors.
Giacomo del Po (1654–1726), Studio per portale monumentale del monastero di San Gregorio Armeno. Acquired by the Museo Capodimonte, Naples, from Sabrier & Paunet, Paris.
Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), A Sunlit Grove of Birch and Pine Trees. Acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Purchased with funds provided by the Disegno Group.
Paul Klee (1879–1940), Nacht-Eindruck einer südlichen Stadt. Acquired by The Istituto centrale per la grafica, Rome, from Stephen Ongpin Fine Art (via @TEFAF).
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Two studies for Suites d'un bal masqué. Pre-empted by the musée Condé, Chantilly, from Ader, Paris.
Circle of Antoine Caron (1521–1599), Le Banquet d’Ahasuerus. Pre-empted by the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from Ader, Paris.
Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), The Meteor. Acquired by Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, from Hazlitt, London. Dorothy Clark Archibald and Thomas L. Archibald Fund & Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection, 2025.3.1.
Joseph Arthur Palliser Severn (1842–1931), Coniston Lake. Acquired by The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, from Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd, London.
DRAWING OF THE MONTH
Michiel D. van Limborch (c. 1615–1675), Portrait of a Girl, c. 1650/60, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
Michiel D. van Limborch (c. 1615–1675), Portrait of a Girl, c. 1650/60, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
Detail: infrared reflectogram of the signature
Detail: infrared reflectogram of the signature
Michiel D. van Limborch (c. 1615–1675)
Portrait of a Girl, c. 1650/60
Black chalk, some black ink, over graphite and some diluted white body colour, heightened with opaque white and some opaque apricot, touched up with ochre ink, on blue laid paper; signed upper left: “MDLimborch“, 404/400 x 335/332 mm, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Graphische Sammlung, inv. no. Z 1854
It was no easy task: having to choose one of the ninety drawings currently on display in Cologne. But then, I was used to the casting process, because the ninety exhibits themselves only make up a tenth of Wallraf-Richartz Museum’s drawings by Netherlandish, Dutch and Flemish artists from the 15th to the 18th centuries. What helped me pick this Portrait of a Girl? It has wall power, is a rare example of non-finito in this genre and presents new research findings, resulting in a rather last-minute attribution.
But one thing at a time.
In large format, our drawing depicts a girl, dressed in the fashion of the 1650s. Her hair is pinned up at the back of her head with silk ribbons. Two loose strands on either side of her face are tied together at the bottom with a bow. The large teardrop-shaped pearl earrings create a beautiful contrast to her dark hair. Her neckline is covered by a shirt and a wide collar, held together by a bow. The delicate lace pattern of the collar is left unfinished, as is the small bow at the top of her shirt. This non-finito is also evident in the features of her face. Pentimenti on her nose and mouth, with different sets of chalk strokes, show how the artist was trying to capture her features.
Until recently, the drawing was kept under the name of Wallerant Vaillant (1623–1677). Vaillant is known for his large portrait drawings in a highly accomplished manner. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum owns three such works that invite direct comparison and further investigations. From the present drawing’s atypical non-finito style, we hoped to gain insights into the artist’s working methods. We: that was Thomas Klinke, restorer and art technologist for drawings and prints at the museum, and myself as an art historian researching drawings from the Netherlandish schools for a collection catalogue.
In the first round, we noticed consistency in materials and technique among the four sheets. The only significant difference we found in Portrait of a Girl were some accents in opaque apricot on her neck next to the pearl. However, our investigation gained momentum when using infrared reflectography and Thomas suddenly discovered some letters in the upper left corner. I was of course expecting Vaillant's signature. But imagine my surprise: the inscription – although difficult to read, it was clearly written in seventeenth-century handwriting – began with what looked like an “H” or an “L” and contained an “m" and a “b”. This could in no way be interpreted as referring to “Vaillant”.
What to do with parts that do not fit? We put them aside and left it as an open question – perhaps as a reference to the sitter – while retaining the traditional attribution to Vaillant. As such, the sheet was loaned together with the other three portrait drawings to the monographic exhibition on the artist in Museum Van Loon in Amsterdam.
This exhibition provided the missing link to solve our puzzle. Among Vaillant’s followers, its catalogue mentions Michiel D. van Limborch. This artist met Vaillant in Middelburg and later in Amsterdam where he worked in the latter’s style. Drawings in the Six Foundation, Amsterdam, or in Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, are closely related to our Portrait of a Girl, except for the latter’s non-finito that still makes it stand out. But apart from that, the letters discovered by Thomas Klinke can now be specified as the signature of this very artist, starting with the ligated initials “MDL”, followed by “imborch”. Cologne’s Portrait of a Girl thus adds to the small drawn œuvre of Van Limborch, as a beautiful example of interdisciplinary collaboration and just in time before our own exhibition.
The only question that remains unanswered is why it was left unfinished.
The exhibition Expedition Drawing. Masters from the Low Countries in Close-Up continues at Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, until 15 March 2026.
EXHIBITION CALENDAR
DECEMBER HIGHLIGHTS
Martin von Wagner Museum, Würzburg
22 Nov 2025 – 22 Mar 2026
Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford
15 Nov 2025 – 16 Mar 2026
Grand Palais, Paris
16 Dec 2025 – 15 Mar 2026
A selection of soon-to-open and previously unhighlighted events from the UK and from further afield. For a more complete overview of ongoing exhibitions and talks, please visit our Exhibition Calendar page.
UK
To Improvise A Mountain: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Curates
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes
Until 25 Jan 2026
Tickets Adult: £15.95
‘To see oursels as ithers see us!’ | Robert Burns
National Gallery Scotland, Edinburgh
Until 8 Feb 2026
Free Entry
'Prince of the Rocks': JMW Turner and the Avon Gorge
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol
Until 11 Jan 2026
Donate what you can
It's not just black and white. Renaissance and Baroque drawings in chalk and charcoal
Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford
Until 16 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: £6
John Constable and David Lucas: A Unison of Feeling
V&A South Kensington, London
Until 14 Jun 2026
Free Entry
Turner in Time
The Whitworth, Manchester
Until 15 Feb 2026
Free Entry
WORLDWIDE
The Subtle Charm of Drawings. The Alessandro Zacchi Donation to the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna
Pinacoteca Nazional di Bologna, Bologna
Until 11 Jan 2026
Tickets Adult: €12
Filippino Lippi and Rome
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
Until 22 Feb 2026
Free Entry
Art and Nature : Stone Painting between the 16th and 17th Centuries
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
Until 6 Jan 2026
Tickets Adult: €15
Don Quixote: A Madman’s Tale, a Tale Worth Laughing At
Mucem, Marseille
Until 30 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €11
Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia
Until 11 Jan 2026
Free Entry
Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor
MFA Boston, Boston
Until 19 Jan 2026
Tickets Adult: $30
Jean Dampt. Image Tailor
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon
Until 9 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €9
Maurice Denis, 1920s. The Splendour of the South
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice, Nice
Until 8 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €10
The Art of transmitting: The Antoine Béal Collection
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans
Until 29 Mar 2026
Free entry
Winter Count: Embracing the Cold
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Until 22 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €8
Bartolomeo Cesi. Painting of Silence in the Age of the Caracci
Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna and Pinacoteca nazionale di Bologna, Bologna
Until 22 Feb 2026
Tickets Adult: €6
Idea and Line Italian Drawings from the Martin von Wagner Collection
Martin von Wagner Museum, Würzburg
Until 22 Mar 2026
Free Entry
Viktor Oliva – Drawings (as a part of the exhibition 1796–1918: Art of the Long Century)
Trade Fair Palace, Prague
Until 8 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: 250 Kč
Joseph Uhl – The Graphic Series Per Aspera and Astra (as a part of the exhibition 1796–1918: Art of the Long Century)
Trade Fair Palace, Prague
Until 8 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: 250 Kč
H.G. Ibels, a committed Nabi
Musée départemental, Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Until 1 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €8
“On to new works” – Max Slevogt and his publisher Bruno Cassirer
The Landesmuseum Mainz, Mainz
Until 8 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €6
Kids! Between Representation and Reality
Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg
Until 6 Apr 2026
Tickets Adult: €12
Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779)
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Until 1 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €15
Étretat, beyond the cliffs: Courbet, Monet, Matisse
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
Until 1 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €12
Giovanni Boldini: The Seduction of Painting
Ex Cavallerizza Ducale di Lucca, Lucca
2 Dec 2025 – 2 Jun 2026
Tickets Adult: €17.50
On Travelling and Being At Home (as part of This is all me! The Christoph Müller II Donation)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Picture Gallery, Berlin
2 Dec 2025 – 8 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €14
Beckmann
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
3 Dec 2025 – 15 Mar 2026
Tickets Adult: €16
The Fascination of Paper
Albertina, Vienna
11 Dec 2025 – 22 March 2026
Tickets Adult: €19.90
Image Credit: Sodoma (1477 - 1549), Bust portrait of a young man, supposed to be of Raphael, Black chalk with bodycolour, washed over, rubbed and pitted throughout, Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, JBS 313
Image Credit: Sodoma (1477 - 1549), Bust portrait of a young man, supposed to be of Raphael, Black chalk with bodycolour, washed over, rubbed and pitted throughout, Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, JBS 313
DEMYSTIFYING DRAWINGS
Mariette mounts, Lanier stamps, Gainsborough numbering, inscriptions by ‘the reliable Venetian hand’, snipped-off top corners: studying the collecting and display history of drawings can be one of the most rewarding yet most daunting aspects of their study.
This occasional mini-series dedicated to drawings collectors will question how the practice of amassing works on paper has enriched and challenged the study of this field. What is the ‘allure’ of collecting objects that were once largely considered merely practical tools rather than works in their own right? How have seminal collectors (and their collections) informed the way we view and study drawings today?
Many collectors would make an excellent (re)introduction to such a broad topic, but Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) and his so-called Libro de’ disegni seemed particularly suitable to the task. The collecting activity of this much-admired and sometimes maligned Tuscan polymath was the focus of an exhibition held at the Louvre and the Nationalmuseum (Stockholm) in 2022, as well as earlier studies by Hellmut Wohl (1986), Licia Ragghianti Collobi (1974), and Otto Kurz (1937), amongst others.
Although Vasari was a highly productive painter and architect, his collection of artist biographies, the Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori (Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects) has been his most consequential theoretical and art-historical work, informing every aspect of his activity – including his collecting habits.
Initially published in 1550, then re-issued in a heavily revised and expanded format in 1568, the Vite presents the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as derived from a singular artistic faculty, which Vasari called disegno:
As there arises a certain notion and judgment which forms in the mind that which, when expressed with the hands, is called disegno, one many conclude that this disegno is nothing other than a visible expression and declaration of one’s mind, or of that which others have imagined in their minds.
- Vasari, Vite, G I.43 (translation by C. Fryklund in Paris-Stockholm 2022, p. 25; with modifications by the author)
Referring to an artist’s capacity of abstraction and inventiveness, the concept of disegno was a founding principle of Vasari’s intellectual activity. Viewed as the most direct and intimate testament of disegno, drawings were pivotal in helping Vasari illustrate the development and improvement of this faculty from the thirteenth century to his lifetime.
The artist avidly and widely collected sheets and had them mounted into his Libro de’ disegni, a bound volume expressly made to mirror the development of the Vite. It is known that Vasari sourced many drawings directly from artists and their descendants, such as a small corpus of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sheets from Vittorio Ghiberti, the great-grandson of Lorenzo Ghiberti. As Vasari makes no mention of the Libro in the 1550 edition of the Vite, it is likely that a portion of his drawings collection was initially bound into the Libro sometime after this date.
From Vasari’s frequent references to the Libro in the second edition of the Vite, we know his collection contained drawings thought to be by Cimabue, Giotto, Luca Della Robbia, Andrea Mantegna, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Fra Bartolomeo, Leonardo, and many more cardinal figures of Italian art from the Duecento to the Cinquecento. After Vasari’s death in 1574, the Libro passed to his heirs, who quickly surrendered the book to Grand Duke Ferdinando I of Tuscany. From this point, all mentions of the Libro cease, leading to the speculation that the collection was unbound and dispersed shortly after the donation.
Various attempts have been made to reconstruct Vasari’s lost drawings collection, not without difficulty. Since Pierre-Jean Mariette’s first reconstruction of the Libro in 1730, it was thought that various sheets could be associated with Vasari by the presence of a characteristic support (Figs. 1-2). These so-called ‘Vasari mounts’, which feature pen-and-wash architectural designs with typically Florentine embellishments (masks, herms, vases), are now thought to have belonged not to their namesake, but to the Florentine nobleman Niccolò Gaddi (1537-1591). Gaddi was likely well-acquainted with Vasari’s drawings collection and may have taken direct inspiration from it: the nobleman possessed at least one drawing formerly in the Libro – Giulio Romano’s Fall of Icarus, now at the Louvre (inv. 3499).
Fig. 1. Page from the collection of Niccolò Gaddi (so-called ‘Vasari Page’). Drawings by Raffaellino del Garbo, Sandro Botticelli, and Filippino Lippi, mount by the ‘Chief Framer’ (anonymous Florentine artist, 16th century). 56.7 x 45.7 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. 1991.190.1
Fig. 1. Page from the collection of Niccolò Gaddi (so-called ‘Vasari Page’). Drawings by Raffaellino del Garbo, Sandro Botticelli, and Filippino Lippi, mount by the ‘Chief Framer’ (anonymous Florentine artist, 16th century). 56.7 x 45.7 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. 1991.190.1
Fig. 2. Verso of Figure 1
Fig. 2. Verso of Figure 1
The erroneous association of the ‘Vasari mounts’ was initially theorised by Arthur Ewart Popham and Philip Pouncey in 1950, who noted the Gaddi family impresa – a phoenix or falcon with the motto ‘TANT CHE GIE VIVRAI’ [‘as long as I’ll live’] – on presumed Libro drawings at the British Museum (inv. 1860,0616.49) and the Louvre (inv. 3573). Research conducted for the 2022 Paris-Stockholm exhibition massively expanded this theory, extending it to nearly all of the mounted sheets traditionally associated with Vasari, not just those that bear the Gaddi impresa.
Today only very few sheets can be confidently deemed to have formed part of the Libro. These consist of drawings that can be successfully cross-referenced with mentions in the Vite or other historical documents (no more than twenty), those that bear mount designs certainly ascribable to Vasari or his circle (about nine, including Fig. 3), or those that can be associated to extant drawings used to make the woodcut portraits which preface each artist biography in the second edition of the Vite.
Fig. 3. Page from the Libro of Giorgio Vasari. Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (Head studies, copies after), and Francesco Granacci (Saint John the Baptist) mount made for Giorgio Vasari by Jacopo Zucchi, with later modifications by Pierre-Jean Mariette. 49.3 x 37.3 cm. Albertina, Vienna, inv. 14179
Fig. 3. Page from the Libro of Giorgio Vasari. Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (Head studies, copies after), and Francesco Granacci (Saint John the Baptist) mount made for Giorgio Vasari by Jacopo Zucchi, with later modifications by Pierre-Jean Mariette. 49.3 x 37.3 cm. Albertina, Vienna, inv. 14179
Even after the radical (and absolutely necessary) reduction in confirmed Vasari drawings after 2022, the seminal nature of his collection has largely endured. Though the artist’s use of his sheets to prove his theory of the constant ‘betterment’ of art has largely fallen out of fashion today, his ideas concerning disegno still have great currency in the common conscience of collectors and enthusiasts. Whether attentively gazing at a Michelangelo drawing at an exhibition or questioning the attribution of a Dutch landscape in a print room, the implicit thirst of many drawings devotees to be better acquainted with the artist’s mind (their disegno) through drawings persists to this day. Conversely, those wishing to pursue different approaches to drawings (anthropological, social, technical) constantly grapple with Vasarian assumptions and impositions. Though it may have been dismembered more than four-hundred years ago, the spectre of Vasari’s Libro is still very much intact: we carry and contend with it wherever we go.
REVIEW
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Apollo-David, c. 1530, marble, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Apollo-David, c. 1530, marble, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Studies of a Male Nude for the Battle of Cascina, 1504, black chalk, white heightening on paper, Teylers Museum.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Studies of a Male Nude for the Battle of Cascina, 1504, black chalk, white heightening on paper, Teylers Museum.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Studies for the Libyan Sibyl for the Sistine Ceiling, c. 1511, red chalk, white chalk on paper, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Studies for the Libyan Sibyl for the Sistine Ceiling, c. 1511, red chalk, white chalk on paper, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Daniele da Volterra (1509–1566), Portrait of Michelangelo, 1547–c. 1553, metalpoint and black chalk, white heightening, on pricked paper, Collection Teylers Museum.
Daniele da Volterra (1509–1566), Portrait of Michelangelo, 1547–c. 1553, metalpoint and black chalk, white heightening, on pricked paper, Collection Teylers Museum.
‘Michelangelo and Men’, held at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem and curated by Terry van Druten, is an ambitious exhibition of firsts. It delves into a topic long dismissed by generations of scholars: the centrality of men in the art and life of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). From the historic treatment of Michelangelo’s homosexuality to his revolutionary artworks that repeatedly returned to the male form, no exhibition until now has been entirely devoted to this subject.
Rather than focusing on biography alone, this intimate show offers a more nuanced exploration of the artist’s complex relationship with masculinity through drawing. It moves between Michelangelo’s engagement with the work of earlier and contemporary artists, his responses to antiquity, extensive anatomical knowledge and reliance on models, his idealised and spiritualised conception of the male body, and the relationships that shaped his life. The result is a thoughtful interrogation of the social, theoretical, and theological frameworks that forged Michelangelo’s vision of men.
The Teylers Museum proves a fitting venue for this exploration. Its remarkable group of twenty-two Michelangelo drawings, acquired by the museum from Rome in 1790, forms the heart of the display. These are joined by forty loans from over twenty institutions, which include drawings, sculptures, letters, prints, and a book. Among them, the Apollo–David (c. 1530) is a true triumph, lent by the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. It is the first time a marble sculpture by Michelangelo has been exhibited in the Netherlands, marking an extraordinary moment for Dutch audiences and viewers outside of Italy.
Stemming from the mind of Dutch architect Afaina de Jong, the exhibition’s design refreshingly departs from the usual sobriety of shows on Old Master drawings. Contemporary mint-green walls and sculptural, oval apertures cut into the gallery partitions create striking visual sightlines, prompting unexpected juxtapositions. Even the typography of the wall text titles is playfully formed from contorted bodies. From the very outset these choices invite visitors to look at Michelangelo afresh.
Six thematic categories structure the exhibition: ‘Larger than Life’, ‘Influential Bodies’, ‘Building the Body’, ‘Male and Female’, ‘The Divine Body’, and ‘Friendship and Love’. The opening section traces the foundations for Michelangelo’s ideal male body, beginning with A Male Nude (after Masaccio) (c. 1492–1496) which sold at Christie’s for a record-breaking $23.16 million in 2022. Driven by an almost forensic curiosity, Michelangelo scrutinised antique sculpture, contemporary artworks, living models, and crucially dissected human bodies to understand anatomy from within. The drawings assembled here make that process abundantly clear; a red chalk nude from the Royal Collection, marked with proportional annotations, expresses the symbiosis of accuracy and exaggeration that truly made Michelangelo’s figures “larger than life”.
Equally compelling in ‘Influential Bodies’ are the black chalk workshop studies for the Battle of Cascina (1504) from the Teylers, displayed beside the copy of the Bathers (c. 1542) by Bastiano da Sangallo (1481–1551) from Holkam Hall. Here, the male body becomes a theatre of movement where soldiers brace, twist, and strain in rapid, muscular inventions, the drawings an exploratory archive of their limbs and torsos. Nearby engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi (c. 1480–1530) and Agostino Veneziano (c. 1490–1540) attest to the cartoon’s early fame within and beyond Florence, a city eager to see itself reflected in monumental, heroic nudity.
Shortly after the Cascina commission, Michelangelo most famously painted the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where his newly created Adam embodied divine perfection in human form. Visitors gain further insight into Michelangelo’s use of live models for such commissions in ‘Building the Body’. Many surviving sheets are fragmentary, yet their incompletion is informative. Models were held in position by ropes or supports as complex poses and gestures were clarified independently. What emerges from sheets like the Teylers’ Studies for Haman (c. 1511), the British Museum’s Study for Adam (c. 1511), and the Uffizi’s Studies for Night (1524) is Michelangelo’s sustained observation of the body, and his vigorous modelling to reveal contour.
Michelangelo also played with gendered bodies, a theme examined next in ‘Male and Female’. His women often possess masculine or androgynous characteristics, a deliberate decision that endowed biblical and mythological figures with heightened grandeur or mystery, as well as reflecting the realities of using male models. The celebrated Studies for the Libyan Sibyl for the Sistine Ceiling (c. 1511) from The Metropolitan Museum of Art – shown for the first time in the Netherlands – captures this dynamic in soft black chalk. Seen beside the Teylers’ Study for Hebe (c. 1518) by Raphael (1483–1520), the formidable presence of Michelangelo’s women becomes unmistakeable, particularly in Cornelis Bos’s (1506/10–1555) engraving of Leda and the Swan (1544–1545), after Michelangelo, and a small nineteenth-century plaster copy of Night from the Maastricht Institute of Arts.
In ‘The Divine Body’, a small wooden Study for a Crucifixion (c. 1562–1563) from Casa Buonarroti, attributed to Michelangelo, expands upon the artist’s fascination with the spiritual potential of the male form. For Michelangelo, discovery was inseparable from creation; the form already lived within the material, waiting to be revealed. His depictions of Christ shown in this section diverge from his other ideal bodies, as gentler, more vulnerable, expressions of a profound personal devotion.
The exhibition culminates in a separate room on ‘Friendship and Love’, a sensitive exploration of Michelangelo’s closest attachments. Letters, poems, and drawings reveal the emotional intensity of his relationships, especially with younger men like the Florentine noble Andrea Quaratesi. Daniele da Volterra’s (1509–1566) informal Portrait of Michelangelo (1547– c. 1553) from the Teylers presents the artist not as a colossal figure of legend, but as a sitter seen through the eyes of a friend. In this final room, the display of the Apollo–David sculpture at a lowered height with soft lighting transforms it into an object of quiet longing. It concludes with The Dream [il Sogno] (c. 1533) from the Courtauld, the most elaborately worked sheet Michelangelo ever produced, saturated with Neoplatonic reflections on desire, beauty, and morality.
Commemorating the 550th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth, the exhibition offers a singular opportunity to encounter an unprecedented assembly of his works in the Netherlands. It speaks to specialists and general audiences alike. While contemporary voices respond to Michelangelo’s work on the audio guide, the accompanying catalogue essays – by Michael Rocke, Raymond Carlson, Eric Boot, Marieke van den Doel, Jennifer Sliwka, Paul Joannides, Terry van Druten, and guest curators Klazina Botke and Martin Gayford – extend the exhibition’s scholarship to confront the contradictions of sexuality, faith, tolerance, and artistic aspiration in sixteenth-century Florence. Through its innovative design and fresh curatorial approach, the exhibition ultimately delivers an exciting reappraisal of Michelangelo and his men.
The exhibition Michelangelo and Men continues at Teylers Museum until January 25.
REAL OR FAKE
Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has formed a key part of an artist’s education since the Renaissance and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.
Venice has long been an epicentre of artistic productivity—rivalling Rome and Florence in the sixteenth century, and serving as the home of the view painting, or veduta, in the eighteenth. Throughout the 1700s, travellers flocked to the Italian provinces in pursuit of inspiration, enlightenment, discovery, and adventure. Aristocratic visitors and connoisseurs encouraged the production of landscapes and cityscapes: visual records and souvenirs of the sites encountered on their journeys. This appetite for vedute lives on, and one canny forger sought to capitalise on it. But which is the forgery, and which is the original?
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ANSWER
The original is, of course, the right/lower image.
Left/Upper Image: Giuseppe Latini, called Maestro del Ricciolo (1903–1972), Venetian view, Il Ponte Casa d’Aste, Milan: 23 October 2018, lot 203
Right/Lower Image: Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780), Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Darmstadt
The name Giuseppe Latini may be less familiar than that of his moniker, the Maestro del Ricciolo, or “the master of the curl”, a pseudonym derived from the artist’s characteristically ornamental curved style of penmanship. Rumoured to have been a Roman priest living in Rome on the Via Margutta, or an Englishman resident in Italy, the maestro is known primarily for his drawn imitations of eighteenth-century the Venetian artists Antonio Canaletto, Francesco Guardi and Giambattista Tiepolo. Latini was prolific and his fakes and copies are amongst the most frequently seen on the art market under an array of different names. At times, his drawings have even found their way into institutional collections; The British Museum has two examples of his work in its holdings.
Latini’s fakes often depict the city of Venice, and are invariably drawn on old paper, often with a prominent watermark. Because the surface of the paper has been impaired by age, the modern ink lines often bleed at the edges and slightly through the paper. Spurious and indecipherable inscriptions in a tidy hand are also frequently found. His subjects were often original, drawings made “in the style of” another artist, however, he would also imitate their compositions. Here, in a drawing that surfaced on the art market in 2018, Latini directly copied a work by Bernardo Bellotto in the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, or a similar drawing by his uncle Antonio Canaletto in the Royal Collection in Windsor.
For further reading, see Giulio Zavatta, Antonio Morassi, 'Federico Zeri e un falsario di disegni guardeschi: Giuseppe Latini alias “il prete romano” alias il Maestro del Ricciolo', Storia dell’arte [150] Nuova Serie 2018|2; and Mark Jones, Fake? The Art of Deception, London, 1990.
RESOURCES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
TO LISTEN
In the third episode of series two of British Art Matters, Dr Christina Faraday meets Dr Esther Chadwick to discuss the radical possibilities of printmaking in response to the political upheaval of eighteenth century Britain. Chadwick was nominated for the prize’s shortlist alongside Cynthia E. Roman and Cristina S. Martinez, Rosemary Hill, Dr Bryony Coombs, Nicholas Olsberg, and the eventual winner, Eleonora Pistis.
TO WATCH
In the 2024 Thaw Lecture, Stephanie Buck, Director of the Kupferstich-Kabinett at the Dresden State Art Collections, and the Drawing Institute’s 2024 Thaw Senior Fellow, explored the interstices of some of the Morgan’s finest early German drawings, among them Dürer’s enigmatic Abduction on Horseback and the Head of an Elderly Man attributed to Sebald Beham. Buck argued, the scarcity of written sources from the period requires us to focus on the process of making through close looking, including technical examination. She considered the relationship between drawing and printmaking, noting how this leads to a more nuanced understanding of the intrinsic artistic meaning and function of drawings, which may change over time. More broadly, the lecture considered questions of how drawings were used in Northern artists’ workshops during the fifteenth- and sixteenth centuries.
TO READ
In an article penned for the Metropolitan Museum’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Nicole Myers explores the late-nineteenth-century Symbolist movement—the misunderstood middle child that flourished in the years between its siblings, Impressionism and Cubism. This international avant-garde movement, which embraced spiritual values, mythological subjects, sexuality, and fantastical, often monstrous, creatures, spread from France across Europe and North America during the last two decades of the century, yet it has beguiled viewers and defied definition.
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