Lot 96: Caspar Freisinger(Germany 1560-1599) Saint

Caspar Freisinger(Germany 1560-1599) Saint Christoph and the Christ Child, pen and brown ink, brown and grey wash, on paper, 28.4 x 20 cm, slightly stained, mounted, unframed, (Sch)Diego López de Escuriaz (active at the Escorial between 1587-1597)The two present works are part of an interesting group of drawings by Spanish artists active at the El Escorial monastary northwest of Madrid (founded in 1563 by Philipp II) in the late 16th century. The drawings were conceived as designs for embroideries on liturgical garments, such as tunicles and dalmaticas, or for ornamental decorations on altars. The almost one hundred sheets produced in this context can be dated between 1587 and 1598. Many of these designs, including the present pair, were perforated for transfer. However, together with most of the other Escorial drawings, these two sheets do not show any traces of a perforation. It is assumed that a second set of cartons replaced the drawings in question, which were then used for transfer to the cloth, so that the original drawings could be preserved in an album for posterity. The drawings executed in pen and brown ink and brown wash on greenish-blue paper constitute the majority of the drawings; they are preserved in two albums in the Escorial's library. Apart from these, only few Spanish designs for embroideries have been preserved. Several drawings which may once have been part of these albums seem to have left the Escorial in the middle of the 19th century, such as four drawings kept at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid; a small group is also preserved outside Madrid, e.g. in the Louvre, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans, the National Gallery in Edinburgh, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. It has been stated that several artists and their workshops, as well as several workshop assistants, participated in the preparations of these embroidery designs fort he Escorial. The leading artists of this group, whose names are known through payment records, were Miguel Barroso (c.1538-1591) and Diego López de Escuriaz. Only very little is known about the life and the career of López, apart from the fact, that he was the head oft he Escorial workshop and was paid very well for his designs. In September 1587, for example, he received 327 reales in silver for eight such garment designs. In 1975 Diego Angulo and Alfonso Pérez Sánchez listed in their catalogue raisonné of the corpus of Spanish drawings a total of twenty drawings by López for the Escorial, all of which are preserved in the monastery's library. The present two drawings can be assigned to the oeuvre of López, based on stylistic comparison with other embroidery designs attributed to him. The delicate execution of the pen drawings and the application of wash and white heightenings can be connected to the characterization of individual figures in López' work. The types of faces and the treatment of the drapery in the two drawings of the Visitation and Saint John the Baptist find their parallels in other designs by that artist. This holds also true for the treatment of architecture and landscape features, such as the study of a tree and the arrangement of the rocks in the foreground. The donkey in the Visitation recalls similar animals in drawings preserved at the Escorial. Among the few embroidery designs by López de Escuriaz preserved outside of Spain, our pair of drawings is comparable with an Adoration of the Magi in the Louvre, a Last Supper at the Yale University Art Gallery, and a Flight into Egypt in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans.