Lot 12: AMBROGIO FIGINO

AMBROGIO FIGINO MILAN 1548 - 1608 A SHEET OF STUDIES: HORSES, AN EVANGELIST AND TWO STUDIES FOR A DEPOSITION 202 by 135 mm

A. Perissa Torrini, Disegni del Figino, Galleria dell'Accademia di Venezia, Catalogo dei Disegni Antichi, Milan 1987, Appendix, p. 192, fig. 88

Benno Geiger, Venice,
his unidentified sale, Munich, Weinmüller, 13-14 October 1938, lot 231, pl. 18;
with Flavia Ormond, London (Italian Old Master Drawings, 1500-1850, 1997, no. 5), from whom bought by the present owner

Ambrogio Figino is better known through his drawings, such as the present, entirely characteristic example of his style, than his paintings which are by comparison much rarer. As Philip Pouncey wrote: ' He seems to have had no difficulty in inventing elegant variations on a theme and it was normal practice for him to make several dozen of these minute sketches for a single picture'.υ1 Often his sheets contain a great ensemble of small, not necessarily related sketches, as in the present study. It has been proposed in the past that the figure of the evangelist near the foreground could relate to Figino's altarpiece of St Matthew and the Angel in the church of S. Raffaele, Milan, for which he made several studies.υ2 This suggestion, although interesting in view of the similarities with the pose of the saint, is not convincing. As Flavia Ormond correctly noted in her catalogue, the seated figure is in fact St. John beholding a vision of the Virgin Immaculate, as described in the Book of Revelations.υ3

The Royal Library, Windsor and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York each have an album of drawings by Figino, and several sheets are in the Accademia, Venice. His work and activity as a draughtsman are discussed at length in the catalogue by Annalisa Perissa Torrini (see Literature). Popham quotes a letter of 4 October 1710 from Padre Resta, who owned the album now in the Morgan Library, in which he refers to the rarity of drawings by the artist 'even in Milan', and claims that many may have been lost in a shipwreck.υ4

The masterly combination of delicate pen and ink over red chalk underdrawing, sometimes invigorated by the use of wash, as on the figure of the evangelist in the present example, gives a very personal touch which is easily recognisable. His graphic style is strongly indebted to that of earlier Milanese artists, including Leonardo and his followers such as Cesare da Sesto, who had a great influence in his formative years.



1. P. Pouncey, 'Studies by Figino for his St. Matthew Altarpiece', in Master Drawings, 1968, no. 3, p. 253
2. Ibid., p. 254, fig. 1
3. Revelations 12:1
4. Pouncey, op. cit, p. 254, note 5