Swift and agile pen strokes animate this brilliant drawing by Stefano da Verona, a leading painter and draftsman active in northern Italy. The highly unusual sheet is one of the earliest surviving examples of an exploratory sketch, in which the artist seems to experiment with ideas rather than copy an existing model. The aged, bearded man who holds a book, staff, and bell represents the hermit Saint Anthony Abbot. The female figure is likely a study for the Virgin of Humility, an iconographical type in which Mary sits humbly on the ground. Through his father, a French court painter, Stefano probably trained in the elegant, attenuated figural style of the French Gothic. His lithe penmanship, at once lyrical and frenetic, with its fluid hatching and open contours, further dematerializes the ethereal forms.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Three Standing Figures (recto); Seated Woman and a Male Hermit in Half-length (verso)
Artist:Stefano da Verona (Stefano di Giovanni d'Arbosio di Francia) (Italian, Paris or Pavia ca. 1374/75–after 1438 Verona)
Date:1435–38
Medium:Pen and brown ink, over traces of charcoal or black chalk (recto); pen and brown ink, brush with touches of brown wash, over traces of charcoal or black chalk (verso)
Dimensions:11 13/16 x 8 13/16in. (30 x 22.4cm)
Classification:Drawings
Credit Line:Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1996
Object Number:1996.364a, b
Inscription: The nearly effaced inscription in pen and brown ink on the upper left quadrant of the verso can be reconstructed, "Questo desegno fo de felipo". This inscription may be traceable to a Veronese collector from the early 15th century, by the name of "Filippo."
On the verso, at the top center of the sheet, an inscription in pen and brown ink has been partially obliterated by scraping.
Possibly previously owned by Felice Feliciano (Italian); Possibly previously owned by Count Ludovico Moscardo Minischalchi (Italian); Count Luigi Miniscalchi (Italian); Count Mario Miniscalchi-Erizzo (Italian); Private Collection, Germany; Private Collection, United States; Vendor: Katrin Bellinger Vendor: W. M. Brady & Co., Inc.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection," January 6–April 13, 1997.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection," April 26–July 25, 2004.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Early Renaissance Drawing in Verona," March 10–June 8, 2014.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Paper Chase: Two Decades of Collecting Drawings and Prints," December 9, 2014–March 16, 2015.
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. "Il Primato del Disegno," May 8, 2015–July 19, 2015.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Innocence and Experience: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints," February 9, 2023–May 16, 2023.
Paul Jeromack "The Sefano da Verona they thought dated from 1900." The Art Newspaper. no. 66, New York, January 1997, p. 11, ill.
George R. Goldner, Colta Ives, Carolyn Logan, Perrin Stein "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1996-1997." in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.s., vol. 55, no. 2, Autumn 1997, p. 25 (entry by George R. Goldner).
Annegrit Schmitt, Katrin Bellinger Old Master Drawings. Exhibition/sale catalogue. New York, 1997, n.p., figs. 1-2, ill.
Evelyn Karet "Stefano da Verona, Felice Feliciano and the First Renaissance Collection of Drawings." Arte Lombarda. Nuova serie, vol. 3, Milan, Italy, 1998, pp. 31, 36-38, figs. 9, 10.
Annegrit Schmitt "Eine unbekannte Zeichnung des Stefano di Giovanni da Verona." Per Luigi Grassi: Disegno e Disegni. Ed. by Anna Forlani Tempesti, and Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, Rimini, 1998, pp. 25-39, Fig.1, p. 24 (recto), fig. 2, p. 35 (verso), ill.
George Goldner "Collecting Drawings for the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Master Drawings. Vol. 38, no. 3, 2000, p. 351, fig. 4 (verso only repr.).
Evelyn Karet Drawings of Stefano da Verona and His Circle and the Origins of Collecting in Italy: A Catalogue Raisonné. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 2002, pp. 69-71, no. 9, both recto and verso repr., ill.
Lorenza Melli I disegni italiani del Quattrocento nel Kupferstich-Kabinett di Dresda Exh. Cat. Florence, Istituto Olandese di Storia dell'Arte (15 Sep. - 5 Nov., 2006). Florence, 2006, p. 41.
Evelyn Karet The 'Antonio II Badile' Album of Drawings: The Origins of Collecting Drawing in Early Modern Northern Italy with contr. by Peter Windows and Alessandra Zamperini. London, 2014, pp. 136-37, 166, note 25, figs. 5.3-4, both recto and verso repr.
l Primato del Disegno. I disegni dei grandi maestri a confronto con i dipinti della Pinacoteca di Brera: dai Primitivi a Modigliani Exh. cat. Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera (May 9 - July 19, 2015). Ed. by Sandrina Bandera, Milan, 2015, pp. 52-53, no. 2a (both recto and verso repr.) (entry by Carmen C. Bambach).
Curator Keith Christiansen outlines how The Met's recently acquired Crucifixion scene was properly attributed to Stefano da Verona using three comparative works by the fifteenth-century artist.
Veronese School, possibly a follower of Stefano da Verona (Stefano di Giovanni d'Arbosio di Francia) (Italian, Paris or Pavia ca. 1374/75–after 1438 Verona)
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