Copy in Reverse Design Orientation: Based on the Group of Reclining Figures at Left in Domenico Beccafumi's Scene of Moses Striking the Rock in the Pavement of Siena Cathedral

The figural group in this drawing was originally designed by Domenico Beccafumi for the pavement in intarsia in the Siena Cathedral which represents Moses Striking the Rock. The drawing is in reverse design orientation with respect to the original and includes only a small portion at left from Beccafumi's monumental oblong scene. This drawing is inscribed with the date "1596 otobre 15" (October 15, 1596) at center in the foreground, in tiny script probably either by the artist of the drawing or a more or less contemporary collector. The numeral "9" in the inscribed date has also been interpreted less convincingly as a numeral "4." Hence, Andrea De Marchi dated this drawing to around 1546, hence the same period as the pavement designs by Beccafumi for the Siena Cathedral, which is not unreasonable but is not persuasive. At an early point, an unnamed scholar noted on the mount of the Metropolitan Museum drawing that it may be a copy, in the same orientation, after the mpression of a chiaroscuro woodcut in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. It. H.I. fol. 94). See also Andrea De Marchi in Siena 1990, p. 493, under no. 162. Moreover, a reversed version of Beccafumi's design and in the direction of this drawing and the Albertina is preserved in an etching with two tone blocks (Morceaux Choisis, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, 1994, cat. no. 67. The reproductive chiaroscuro woodcuts have been attributed to Andrea Andreani. None of this, however, settles the authorship of the present drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, since the extant reproductive prints after Beccafumi's very popular designs for the pavement of the Siena Cathedral exist in both the same direction and in the mirror-image direction of the original compositions.
(C. C. Bambach; August 2014)