Putto Bending a Bow

Attributed to Giorgione Italian

Not on view

The steep perspective in which the putto is seen establishes that the figure must have been intended for placement high on a painted palace façade, and Pierre-Jean Mariette's addition of a base and surrounding niche for the figure would seem to indicate that he thought the putto could have served just such a purpose. Jaynie Anderson related the Museum's drawing to the extant fresco fragment showing a Hesperid Cupid from Giorgione's original decoration in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (Saltwood Castle, Saltwood Heritage Foundation, Kent; see References: Anderson 1996, p. 312, fig. 173). Erica Tietze-Conrat was apparently the first to call attention to Vasari's mention of a similar figure on the façade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, "un angelo a guisa di Cupido" ("an angel depicted as Cupid": Vasari 1550 and 1568, vol. 4, p. 96).

The plausible attribution of the drawing to Giorgione goes back at least to the time of Mariette. On several occasions in the past Terisio Pignatti has ascribed this sheet to the young Titian, but he seems to have abandoned this notion, since our drawing is not mentioned in his 1979 book on Titian as a draughtsman. The Mariette catalogue entry for this drawing reads: «　GIORGION, (Francefco Sanefe, dit le) Venit. / 445 Un Amour ployant fon arc, & deux aurres / Sujets, à la fanguine, où fe voit une femme edormie, &c　». A sketch of our drawing by Saint Aubin is found in the border of the Mariette collection sale catalogue in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1994, William M. Griswold and Linda Wolk-Simon published this drawing with an attribution to Michelangelo Anselmi (Siena or Lucca 1492 – 1556 Parma), adducing stylistic comparisons that do not seem sufficiently convincing to this compiler to remove the drawing from Giorgione's oeuvre (for an immediate comparison see Anselmi’s cartoon fragment with ‘Putti playing with hoops’ now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 2013.117: repr. in Bambach, ‘Il Primato del Disegno’, 2015, pp. 24-25, fig. 9). A copy after this drawing does exist that is much more likely to be by Anselmi; it was formerly owned by Alan Stone (New York), is presently the property of Yvonne Tan Bunzl (London), although it was inexplicably published as "Giorgione" by W. R. Rearick in 2001 as in private collection, Vienna.

Putto Bending a Bow, Attributed to Giorgione (Italian, Castelfranco Veneto 1477/78–1510 Venice), Red chalk. Original sheet, 15.7 x 6.6 cm.; this has been made up (almost certainly by Pierre-Jean Mariette) to a sheet 23.7 x 15.2 cm. on which a base and a surrounding niche for the putto have been indicated in pen and brown ink, red chalk and brush and red wash

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Putto Bending a Bow, Attributed to Giorgione (Italian, Castelfranco Veneto 1477/78–1510 Venice), Red chalk. Original sheet, 15.7 x 6.6 cm.; this has been made up (almost certainly by Pierre-Jean Mariette) to a sheet 23.7 x 15.2 cm. on which a base and a surrounding niche for the putto have been indicated in pen and brown ink, red chalk and brush and red wash
Putto Bending a Bow, Attributed to Giorgione (Italian, Castelfranco Veneto 1477/78–1510 Venice), Red chalk. Original sheet, 15.7 x 6.6 cm.; this has been made up (almost certainly by Pierre-Jean Mariette) to a sheet 23.7 x 15.2 cm. on which a base and a surrounding niche for the putto have been indicated in pen and brown ink, red chalk and brush and red wash
Putto Bending a Bow, Attributed to Giorgione (Italian, Castelfranco Veneto 1477/78–1510 Venice), Red chalk. Original sheet, 15.7 x 6.6 cm.; this has been made up (almost certainly by Pierre-Jean Mariette) to a sheet 23.7 x 15.2 cm. on which a base and a surrounding niche for the putto have been indicated in pen and brown ink, red chalk and brush and red wash
Putto Bending a Bow, Attributed to Giorgione (Italian, Castelfranco Veneto 1477/78–1510 Venice), Red chalk. Original sheet, 15.7 x 6.6 cm.; this has been made up (almost certainly by Pierre-Jean Mariette) to a sheet 23.7 x 15.2 cm. on which a base and a surrounding niche for the putto have been indicated in pen and brown ink, red chalk and brush and red wash
Putto Bending a Bow, Attributed to Giorgione (Italian, Castelfranco Veneto 1477/78–1510 Venice), Red chalk. Original sheet, 15.7 x 6.6 cm.; this has been made up (almost certainly by Pierre-Jean Mariette) to a sheet 23.7 x 15.2 cm. on which a base and a surrounding niche for the putto have been indicated in pen and brown ink, red chalk and brush and red wash

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