Lot 15: f - PELLEGRINO TIBALDI BOLOGNA 1527 - 1596

STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF AEOLUS

measurements note
294 by 182mm

bears old numbering in pen and ink: 4

red chalk

PROVENANCE

John Barrymore;
his daughter, Diana Barrymore;
anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 14 January 1992, lot 86

EXHIBITED

New York, Trinity Fine Art, Old Master Drawings and European Works of Art, 1994, no. 10, reproduced

LITERATURE

Marzia Faietti and Dominique Cordellier, Un siècle de dessin à Bologne, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Louvre, 2001, p. 137, under cat. no. 40

NOTE

This is a study for the central figure of Aeolus on the ceiling of the Sala di Ulisse in the Palazzo Poggi, Bologna, painted circa 1550-1551 (fig. 1). It was Aeolus who, in order to help Ulysses on his journey, gave him and his men all the adverse winds tied up in a leather bag. The figure of Aeolus reveals Tibaldi's extraordinary ingegno, combining a Michelangelesque aggressiveness and a love of the fantastic with an elegant decorative sensibility to create one of the most original and distinctive fresco cycles of mid-sixteenth century Italian art. Although no drawing for the entire composition seems to have survived, another red chalk study by Tibaldi for this important figure is in the Louvre (inv. no. 10847), evidence of the effort and care he must have taken to create such a successful image. As Dominique Cordellier has pointed out (loc. cit.), the Louvre drawing is a more finished, less freely executed study than the present one, and very close to the final fresco. The reference in the Louvre exhibition catalogue to a further study for the figure of Aeolus seems to be a confusion with a red chalk study in the Uffizi of Polyphemus (inv.no.6376F), also related to the decoration of the Sala di Ulisse in Palazzo Poggi.

The dating of the Palazzo Poggi frescoes has engaged innumerable art historians (see Jürgen Winkelmann, 'Pellegrino Tibaldi', in Pittura bolognese del '500, ed. by V.F. Pietrantonio, Bologna 1986, vol. II, pp. 480-483), but only Vittoria Romani has noticed that none of the four depictions of the Poggi coat-of-arms (an eagle on six hills) is surmounted by a cardinal's hat. Giovanni Poggi was elevated to this position by Pope Julius III on 20 November 1551 (see The Age of Correggio and the Carracci, exhibition catalogue, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1986, p. 206). For this reason alone the frescoes must date from before 1551.

Tibaldi worked for Giovanni Poggi both in Rome, at his palazzina on the Pincio (a loggia and the façade, now destroyed), and later, upon his return to Bologna, on his Palazzo (now part of the Università di Bologna), and on his family chapel in San Giacomo Maggiore. His work for the Cardinal ended in 1558 when Tibaldi was called away to decorate the Palazzo Ferretti in Ancona, after which he worked in Milan, Ferrara, and at the court of Philip II in Spain. However, it was certainly his work in the two rooms on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Poggi which prompted Vasari's comment that he was a 'pittore di somma aspettazione, e di bellissimo ingegno'.

This study for the Sala di Ulisse is of great importance, as so few drawings have survived relating to what was arguably Tibaldi's most important and successful commission.