De apostel Bartholomeus, gezeten op een troon

[Raffaellino del Garbo]

23

Saint Bartholomew

Pen and brown ink, brown wash, heightened with white, on dark beige paper tinted pink. Squared in red chalk. Pricked. Framing line in pencil and in pen and brown ink (bottom edge). Vertical tear (repaired); paper loss, upper right (repaired).

Inscribed on a strip of paper attached to the verso, top left: Gentile da [...] / Pitt. di [...] / firenze / Perugia / Venezi in Sa[...] / gran Consig[...] / isse 80 / M.Ang[...]e. / di maniera gent[...] / come il nome (pen and brown ink).

190 x 134 mm.

CHAIN LINES: Invisible.

PROVENANCE: Odescalchi; acquired in 1790 (L. 2392).

INV. NO.: K II 40.

EXHIBITIONS: Florence-Rome, 1983-1984, no. 3 (repr.).

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Van Regteren Altena, 1966, p. 46, pl. 19; idem, exh. Paris, 1972, p. 11, under no. 6; Pierpaoli, exh. Bologna, 1998, p. 44, note 8.


At one time this Saint Bartholomew was attributed to Gentile da Fabriano, if - as seems likely - the inscription on the strip of paper attached to the verso refers to the drawing on the recto. On the grounds of its similarity to a Saint Peter enthroned between Saints John the Baptist and Sebastian in the Uffizi (inv. 52 E), which was published by Bodmer (1929, pl. 40), Van Regteren Altena proposed the name of Raffaellino del Garbo instead. The treatment of head, beard and hands resembles accepted drawings such as the Saints Peter and Paul in a roundel in the Uffizi (inv. 346 E; Berenson, 1938, no. 622, fig. 273) or the Saint John the Baptist in the same collection (inv. 196 E; Carpaneto, 1971, fig. 48). Meijer noted that the classical pose and ample draperies were hardly characteristic of Raffaellino, but supposed that in his late phase, which is poorly documented, the artist could have adopted this broader, more classically oriented style. The same author related the Saint Bartholomew to Michelangelo's Moses and concluded that the drawing could be no earlier than 1515. Bambach (oral communication, 22 September 1999) endorsed the attribution and likewise suggested a date late in Raffaellino's career.
Meijer's conjecture that No. 23 might have formed part of a series together with the previous entry and a Saint James Major sold at auction in London (Sotheby's, 13 December 1973, lot 5, repr.) is to be discounted; the way in which the figures are presented is strikingly different in each case.