Tintoretto

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Tintoretto
1518-1594
Studies of Michelangelo's Samson and the Philistines (recto and verso)
ca. 1560-1570
Charcoal and black chalk, with white opaque watercolor, on blue paper; verso: charcoal with black chalk and white chalk.
17 1/2 x 11 3/8 inches (443 x 285 mm)
Thaw Collection.
2005.234

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Tintoretto produced drawings after sculpture throughout his career, including studies of heads and entire figures after sculptures by Michelangelo. This is one of a group of drawings probably made after a wax or clay model of a sculptural group representing Samson slaying the Philistines that was commissioned from Michelangelo in 1508 and again in 1528 by the republican rulers of Florence. Michelangelo prepared a model but never executed the sculpture; the marble block was eventually used by Baccio Bandinelli for his Hercules and Cacus, which stands in the Piazza della Signoria. Tintoretto's drawings after Michelangelo are often dated to the younger artist's formative period, the 1540s or 1550s, but the sheets were probably not for Tintoretto's own artistic education, but rather, examples drawn for the training of his workshop assistants.
This sheet includes multiple views of the Samson group from a single vantage point. The study at left on the recto is by far the best of the three and with its redrawn contours seems the work of a draftsman seeking to understand the sculpted form; it could perhaps be by Tintoretto himself. In the study at right on the recto, however, the pattern of shadow along Samson's back and neck has largely ceased to define form and is a flattened, almost abstracted shape--the benchmark of a copy. Finally, the verso is an ever weaker echo: it is not entirely clear that the draftsman, surely one of Tintoretto's assistants rather than the master himself, cared to understand how the feet at the base of the group connected to the legs of the two Philistines. -- Exhibition Label, from "Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice"

Inscription: 

Watermark: Fragmentary circle, hard to decipher because paper is rough, with many inclusions.

Provenance: 
Lord Wharton, Rushton Manor, Kettering and London; Adrian Ward-Jackson (1950-1991), London; Eugene V. (1927-2018) and Clare E. (1924-2017) Thaw, New York; Eugene Victor Thaw Art Foundation, New York and Santa Fe, 1987.
Watermark: 
Associated names: 

Tintoretto, 1518-1594, Workshop of.
Wharton, Lord, former owner.
Ward-Jackson, Adrian, former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
Thaw, Clare, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Rhoda Eitel-Porter and and John Marciari, Italian Renaissance Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2019, no. 69.
John Marciari, Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice, New York, 2018, figs. 77-78, repr.
Selected references: New York 1994-95, no. 8; London 1996-97, no. 8; New York 2006, no. 17; Munich 2008-9, no. 17; New York and Williamstown 2017-18, no. 382; New York and Washington 2018-19, 103-6, 108, 122, and no. 37.
Thaw Catalogue Raisonné, 2017, no. 382, repr.
Denison, Cara D. et al. The Thaw Collection : Master Drawings and New Acquisitions. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1994, no. 8.
From Leonardo to Pollock: Master drawings from the Morgan Library. New York: Morgan Library, 2006, cat. no. 17, p. 40-41.
100 Master drawings from the Morgan Library & Museum. München : Hirmer, 2008, no. 17, repr. [Rhoda Eitel-Porter]

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