An Antique Source for an Early Drawing by Pietro da CortonaAuthor(s): Malcolm CampbellSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Dec., 1963), pp. 360-361Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048118 .

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360 ART BULLETIN

human love? The link between the two is established for us in the most imaginative and central symbol of the entire painting, the tree. For this gnarled and very striking tree which holds the hidden and desired honey is the same tree in whose hollow, as in a womb, we discover the child at play. In one bold stroke the dis- covery of honey is thus identified with the discovery of love. The symbolic tree, almost leafless, Douglas comments (speaking of the Quincy Shaw Nativity in a private collection in New York), is "an element that occurs so often in Piero's works that it may be regarded almost as a badge of this childless artist."2" The sweet- ness that he himself never knew in life Piero has asso- ciated with the happiness of marriage, which was also outside his life-experience. By a kind of visual metaphor the tree, which so dominates the painting, is made the key to the entire painting.

Honey has been a part of the classical vocabulary of love ever since Sappho."2 The honey-and-love asso- ciation, moreover, was implicit in the text of Ovid that Piero chose to illustrate. For it is in the context of the Liberalia that Ovid invents the story of the discovery of honey as an explanation for the offering of honey cakes on that feast. The Liberalia was a spring fertility festival celebrated on March 17, on which occasion the Roman youth of seventeen received the toga vrilis or toga libera.28 It received this name, Ovid says, be- cause Bacchus is named Liber and manhood marks the beginning of a life of greater libertas, freedom.29 Only the man is free to marry and enter the enjoyment of the fuller life, the life of love.

In this light, the evolutionary interpretation dis- covered by Panofsky must also be reread. The atavistic theme is not necessarily canceled out, but it is over- written with the new theme. On this level, the eras before and after the discovery of honey describe the eras before and after the discovery of love. It is here that a Lucretian evolutionary plan may have some relevance, for in Lucretius it is marriage and the beginning of family life that mark the beginning of the softening and civilizing of man.80 The euhemeristic myth acquires a new depth. The painting seems to show the god's contribution to civilization in the discovery of honey, but in re-examination it shows a discovery that

every man makes for himself when he falls in love, takes a wife, and "settles down."

Whether the myth carries even more specific refer- ence to the "mundane" can only be conjectured. Bellini in his Feast of the Gods, according to Edgar Wind's theory, particularized the application of another story of Ovid by turning the gods into real portraits of the principal personages involved in the wedding of Alfonso d'Este to Lucrezia Borgia.8" The facial types used by Piero, with the consistently short, turned-up noses, would seem to rule out so explicit a reference to con- temporary events. Yet it is quite possible that a general- ized reference is made to some marriage, recent or expected, in the family of Guidantonio Vespucci, who commissioned the work.2 On this level the Discovery of Honey would be immediately seen as a very gracious wish that the bride and groom for whom it was painted should discover in their married life a love abundantly fruitful, and as sweet as honey. BOSTON COLLEGE

26. Op.cit., p. 5x; see also pp. 65-66. 27. Sappho, Carm. 132 (Reinach). See also "honey" as a

term of endearment in Cicero, Ad familiares VIII, 8, x (Coelius ad Cic.); Plautus, Poenulus, I, 2, x6o, 176, 181, et alibi.

28. Pauly-Wissowa, x926, xIII, I, 68-76, "Liber Pater." 29. Fasti 1II, 777-778. 30. De rerum natura v, o1014. 3'. Edgar Wind, Bellini's Feast of the Gods, pp. 36-44.

However, see review by Giles Robertson in Burlington Mag- azine, XCI, 1949, pp. 295-296.

32. Douglas, op.cit., p. 61.

AN ANTIQUE SOURCE FOR AN EARLY DRAWING BY

PIETRO DA CORTONA

MALCOLM CAMPBELL

A drawing traditionally ascribed to Pietro da Cor- tona in which a youthful female in antique dress trans- ports an assortment of animals has been published several times as a studio dall'antico (Fig. I), but without indication of a specific source.? A terra-cotta relief of unknown provenance now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum (Fig. 2) proves conclusively that the drawing had an antique model, and it may, in fact, have been the very source of Pietro's study." The differences between drawing and relief--such as the changes in hair style and the curious Phrygian boots worn by Pietro's figure-result from improvisations by the Seicento artist rather than his use of a variant antique prototype.

These essentially iconographic variations are less im- portant than the stylistic similarities and divergencies

I. Florence, Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, No. 14807 F. 270 x 192 mm. Red chalk on white paper. Now placed in a passe partout mount, the drawing was originally in one of the cartelle rosse which contain drawings from the collection of Cardinal Leopold de' Medici. [For the history of Leopold's collection see the preface to Catalogo dei Disegni scelti, x849, a manuscript in the library of the Uffizi Drawing

Cabinet; P. N. Ferri, Catalogo riassuntivo della Raccolta di Disegni antichi e moderni posseduta dalla R. Galleria degli Ufizi di Firenze, Rome, x89o, pp. 9-1o (especially notes 7-9) and also R. Bacou, "Filippo Baldinucci Collezionista" in the catalogue Disegni fiorentini del Louvre, Rome, 1959 (especially p. x6).] The drawing has been published by L. Bianchi, "Disegni di Pietro da Cortona" in the catalogue Mostra di Pietro da Cortona, Rome, x956, p. 57, no. 48 and plate 52, and G. Briganti, Pietro da Cortona, Florence, 1962, pp. 137, 300 and plate 286, no. 27.

2. Museum Inventory No. MS 2457. A gift of Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst, this irregular fragment of a hollow terra cotta cylinder measures 48 x 27 cm. According to the museum identification the relief was part of a well curb and is datable early Ist century A.D. The modest quality of the terra cotta does not preclude the possibility that it was the product of commercial production, in which case Pietro may have used an example made from the same mold rather than this specific piece.

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I. Pietro da Cortona, Female Figure Carrying Animals. Florence, Uffizi (photo: Soprintendenza alle Gallerie)

2. Fragment of an Antique Terra Cotta Relief. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum (photo: Lilly Berg)

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NOTES 361

between the study and its antique source. Clearly, Pietro has concentrated on the female figure, giving her burden of game animals only cursory attention (so much is this the case that the boar in the relief seems more like a pig in the drawing and was so identified in its earliest description)." In his version this figure grows taller, its head smaller. The sense of physical bulk present in the terra cotta is not only retained but am- plified by the simplification of her drapery, which creates broad planes instead of the crisper, more linear patterns of the antique source. Compare, for example, the fall of drapery over the right shoulders of the two figures or the way the folds of fabric around their throats are handled. In contrast to the relatively nervous dance-like motion suggested by the thin drapery in the terra cotta, the heavier clothing of the figure in the drawing suggests composed and rhythmic movement.

Although the drawing serves as an interesting gauge of the youthful artist's attitude toward adaptation from the antique, it obviously lacks the consummate surety of his mature drawing style. As Wittkower has re- marked of Pietro's earliest paintings and frescoes, this drawing reveals "little of the hot breath of genius," but despite its uncertain passages, it does fit convincingly into the artist's oeuvre ca. 1620, when the deep-set eye, the heavy ear, the flattened nose and forehead, and the double chin that occur in the drawing can be found in his paintings and frescoes.4

In addition to documenting Pietro da Cortona's assimilation of antique sources, the association of the drawing, one of his rare juvenilia, with a specific proto- type serves two other purposes. First, it suggests the completion of the fragmentary group on the terra cotta relief with a pair of birds, probably pigeons, suspended from the missing portion of the staff carried by the strid- ing figure.5 Secondly, the figure in the drawing, which previously had been considered to be either a peasant woman on her way to market or a bacchante, can now be identified as a huntress who allegorically represents Winter." This attribution is made possible by the re- construction of the cylinder of which the terra cotta relief is a segment. Approximately I6o cm in circum- ference, the cylinder would have allowed sufficient, but not excessive, space for four additional figures, each

occupying, like the figure on the fragment, 27 or 28 cm of this dimension. The identity of these five figures is provided by a cylindrical base in the Villa Albani on which a torch-bearing deity, probably Hekate as Moon Goddess, is accompanied by allegorical figures repre- senting the Four Seasons, one of whom-identified by Helbig as Winter--displays the same attributes in the same manner as the figure in the drawing.7

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

3. The first description of the drawing is in a manuscript in the library of the Uffizi Cabinet entitled Inventario gen- erale della Raccolta dei Disegni della R. Galleria disposto secundo l'Ordine dei Medici (datable 1784), where it is described as "una femmina in atto di camminare, che porta in spalla degli animali, e strascina un porco con la destra. A matita rossa."

4. For Wittkower's comment see R. Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy: i6oo to 1750, Baltimore, 1958, p. 163. The drawing should be compared with similar figures in Pietro's earliest work, such as the females in the fresco Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in the Galleria of the Palazzo Mattei, Rome (illustrated in J. Hess, "Tassi, Bonzi e Cortona a Palazzo Mattei," Commentari, v, Fasc. Iv, 1954, fig. 5 and Briganti, op.cit., pl. x5); the woman seen in pro- file to the right of Semiramis in the Judgment of Semiramis in the collection of Denis Mahon, London (illustrated in

Briganti, op.cit., pls. 22 and detail, 23); and the attendants in the Nativity of the Virgin in a private collection in Rome (illustrated in Briganti, op.cit., pl. 24).

5. It should be noted, however, that the unworked field between the cloak of the terra-cotta figure and the right edge of the relief would necessitate the placement of the birds farther to the right than Pietro has indicated in his drawing.

6. For the previous identification see Bianchi, loc.cit. 7. W. Helbig, Fiihrer durch die 8ffentlichen Sammiungen

klassischer Altertilmer in Rom, Leipzig, 1913, 11, no. I825. Helbig provides complete bibliography for the piece as well as a detailed discussion of its iconography. For an illustration see P. Arndt and G. Lippold, Photographische Einzelaufnahmen antiker Skulpturen (eds. Arndt and W. Amelung), Munich, 1929, series xI, p. 77, cat. nos. 3296-3300 (no. 3299 is Winter). The University of Pennsylvania Museum identifies its terra-cotta relief as a Huntress who symbolizes Hiems (Winter).

A PORTRAIT OF PHILIP IV BY

JUAN BAUTISTA MAINO

JosE L6PEZ-REY

There is in one of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's armor galleries a life-size oil portrait of Philip IV of Spain in parade armor, attributed to a "follower of Velazquez" (Fig. I).' It is a work of very fine quality which, as I shall endeavor to prove, was painted outside of Velizquez's circle, though in his time, by a painter of an older generation.

The King is seen in black, gold-inlaid full armor, with red at the edges of the main pieces; this decorative design is dynamically rendered without lessening the full modeling of the figure. The blond Philip, his face painted in grey and pink hues, stands, baton in the right hand, against the red velvet curtain and the red- velvet-draped stand where his helmet rests. The brush- work is evenly smooth throughout the whole composi- tion, and the highlights, whether on the subject's face, the armor, or the drapes, bring about the same sheen. The design of the armor, the King's formal and yet animated pose, and the interplay between his idle left hand and his sword hilt, both dynamically shaped, imbue the composition with a brisk and lively rhythm which recalls major works by Juan Bautista Maino, to whom, as Lope de Vega put it in 1630, art was indebted for the stirring attitude which animated his figures:

Juan Bautista Maino a quien el arte debe aquella acci6n que las figuras mueve2

I. Oil on canvas; 1,981 x i,i8i mm. It came to the Metro- politan Museum of Art as a bequest of Helen Hay White in 1944. Its inventory number is 45.128.14.

2. Laurel de Apolo, in Obras sueltas, Madrid, 1776, I, p.

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